
Degrees: Thought Capsules and Micro Tales (1989)
Reading Modern Poetry, London, 1989
Degrees: Thought Capsules and Micro Tales (1989)
"Poetry" (1977)
Introduction to an Omnibus edition of his work, as quoted in Somewhere in Time (1998), p. 318 - 319
“The teacher is the designer of the learning process a choreographer of discovery.”
A Handmade Life: In Search of Simplicity
“I believe in a lofty form of poetry, in the work in which beauty will be mingled with beliefs.”
The Inferno (1917), Ch. XVII
Context: Who shall compose the Bible of human desire, the terrible and simple Bible of that which drives us from life to life, the Bible of our doings, our goings, our original fall? Who will dare to tell everything, who will have the genius to see everything?
I believe in a lofty form of poetry, in the work in which beauty will be mingled with beliefs. The more incapable of it I feel myself, the more I believe it to be possible. The sad splendour with which certain memories of mine overwhelm me, shows me that it is possible. Sometimes I myself have been sublime, I myself have been a masterpiece. Sometimes my visions have been mingled with a thrill of evidence so strong and so creative that the whole room has quivered with it like a forest, and there have been moments, in truth, when the silence cried out.
But I have stolen all this, and I have profited by it, thanks to the shamelessness of the truth revealed. At the point in space in which, by accident, I found myself, I had only to open my eyes and to stretch out my mendicant hands to accomplish more than a dream, to accomplish almost a work.
“I am composed of contradictions, which is why poetry is a better form for me than philosophy”
Interview by email with Elizabeth MacDonald 2004, published 'Poetry Ireland Review'
Poetry Quotes
“Poetry is a form of necessary speech.”
How to Read a Poem And Fall in Love with Poetry (1998)