Vol. II, p. 30
1980s, Letters to the Schools (1981, 1985)
Context: Attention involves seeing and hearing. We hear not only with our ears but also we are sensitive to the tones, the voice, to the implication of words, to hear without interference, to capture instantly the depth of a sound. Sound plays an extraordinary part in our lives: the sound of thunder, a flute playing in the distance, the unheard sound of the universe; the sound of silence, the sound of one’s own heart beating; the sound of a bird and the noise of a man walking on the pavement; the waterfall. The universe is filled with sound. This sound has its own silence; all living things are involved in this sound of silence. To be attentive is to hear this silence and move with it.
“What matters in poetry is form, how words work together, the sounds and silences their combinations make. The ordered effects they produce on the attentive hearer.”
Lives of the Poets, Phoenix, 1988
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Michael Schmidt (poet) 10
American poet 1947Related quotes
Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922)
Context: When, in architecture, one uses a fixed unit and combinations of it, to produce harmony, the effect should be most striking and apparent... as it is in music by the measured beat and in poetry by the cadence and rhythm.<!--Ch. II
Poetry and the World, Ecco Press,1988
Latin statement in De Quattuor Sectis Novellis, as translated in Typical English Churchmen (1909) by John Neville Figgis, p. 16
“… nature often produces combinations and effects which on paper appear incorrect.”
Source: Practical Pictorial Photography, 1898, Illumination of clouds and the direction of light, p. 101
“Prose: words in their best order; poetry: the best words in the best order.”
12 July 1827.
Table Talk (1821–1834)
Variant: Poetry: the best words in the best order.
Context: I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry; that is, prose = words in their best order; poetry = the best words in their best order.
“The word "Silence" today sounds "bridegroom" or the "tragedy of love."”
quoted in Dieter Schott, Bill Luckin, Geneviève Massard-Guilbaud, Resources of the City: Contributions to an Environmental History of Modern Europe (2005), p. 225
“Poetry is what looks like poetry, what sounds like poetry. It is metrical composition.”
'Poetry, Structure and Tradition' Dec 31 1939
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