On poetry
“Natural history studies are fun, rewarding and an invaluable source of information.”
"A Fisherman" in Wild Ways : Zen Poems (2003), edited and translated by John Stevens, p. 37.
Context: Studying texts and stiff meditation can make you lose your Original Mind.
A solitary tune by a fisherman, though, can be an invaluable treasure.
Dusk rain on the river, the moon peeking in and out of the clouds;
Elegant beyond words, he chants his songs night after night.
“Once, I was a master at recycling leftovers. Now I cultivate the art of simmering memories.”
Source: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
When the Ayatollah Dictates Poetry http://www.aawsat.net/2015/07/article55344336/when-the-ayatollah-dictates-poetry, Ashraq Al-Awsat (Jul 11, 2015).
Opening letter to Nathan Zuckerman
The Facts: A Novelist's Autobiography (1988)
“Poetry is the shadow cast by our imaginations.”
These Are My Rivers: New & Selected Poems, 1955-1993 (New Directions) ISBN: 0-0112-1273-4 0-0112-1252-1
On a meeting of Richard Francis Burton on 18 September 1886, Vol. 1, p. 230
Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving (1907)
Context: Burton had a most vivid way of putting things — especially of the East. He had both a fine imaginative power and a memory richly stored not only from study but from personal experience. As he talked, fancy seemed to run riot in its alluring power; and the whole world of thought seemed to flame with gorgeous colour. Burton knew the East. Its brilliant dawns and sunsets; its rich tropic vegetation, and its arid fiery deserts; its cool, dark mosques and temples; its crowded bazaars; its narrow streets; its windows guarded for out-looking and from in-looking eyes; the pride and swagger of its passionate men, and the mysteries of its veiled women; its romances; its beauty; its horrors.
“Science is the poetry of the intellect and poetry the science of the heart's affections.”
Source: The Alexandria Quartet
