
“Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination.”
As quoted in Advances in Biochemical Psychopharmacology, Vol. 25 (1980), p. 3
When the Ayatollah Dictates Poetry http://www.aawsat.net/2015/07/article55344336/when-the-ayatollah-dictates-poetry, Ashraq Al-Awsat (Jul 11, 2015).
“Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination.”
As quoted in Advances in Biochemical Psychopharmacology, Vol. 25 (1980), p. 3
As quoted in C. F. Main & Peter J. Seng, Poems (Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1973), p. 3
(original Dutch, citaat van B.C. Koekkoek:) Zal ik nu deze palet-slaven vragen, wat poezij is, en onder hoe vele vormen zij zich aan ons vertoont of voordoet? Zij willen haar gekluisterd hebben, evenals zij aan het palet van hun meester gebonden zijn, aan het een of andere gedeelte der gewijde geschiedenis.. ..aan ene volkslegende.. ..een wonder vreemd landschap.. ..en meer andere hoogdravende voorstellingen.
Koekkoek refers to the German painters who rejected the Dutch (often more realistic) landscape-painters, as 'non-poetic' artists]
Source: Herinneringen aan en Mededeelingen van…' (1841), p. 28
“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
“Music should be directed by the ear, poetry by the imagination”
Review -Jean Gaingne -New & Selected Poems 1967
Prose
“Human life without some form of poetry is not human life but animal existence.”
"The Obscurity of the Poet", p. 16
Poetry and the Age (1953)
Source: The Akhmatova Journals, Volume I: 1938-1941
“A phoneme, an utterance, could be said to be the beginning of poetry's evolutionary chain.”
The Cosmos as a Poem (2010)
R. S. Thomas : Priest and Poet, BBC TV (2 April 1972)
Context: Any form of orthodoxy is just not part of a poet's province … A poet must be able to claim … freedom to follow the vision of poetry, the imaginative vision of poetry … And in any case, poetry is religion, religion is poetry. The message of the New Testament is poetry. Christ was a poet, the New Testament is metaphor, the Resurrection is a metaphor; and I feel perfectly within my rights in approaching my whole vocation as priest and preacher as one who is to present poetry; and when I preach poetry I am preaching Christianity, and when one discusses Christianity one is discussing poetry in its imaginative aspects. … My work as a poet has to deal with the presentation of imaginative truth.