State of the Art (2000)
Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet
Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942), It Must Be Abstract
Context: p>So poisonousAre the ravishments of truth, so fatal to
The truth itself, the first idea becomes
The hermit in a poet’s metaphors,Who comes and goes and comes and goes all day.</p
“But to be a poet is to accept the responsibility of speaking the truth!”
Nick Drake (poet) (1961) British writer
Source: The Rahotep series, Book 3: Egypt: The Book of Chaos (2011), Ch. 2
Context: I see I have shocked you all a little. But to be a poet is to accept the responsibility of speaking the truth! No matter what the cost to my personal safety [... ] in matters of men and this world. I’m a poet, not a complete fool…
“I consider myself a poet first and a musician second. I live like a poet and I'll die like a poet.”
Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist
Interview http://www.expectingrain.com/dok/int/shelton1978.07.29.html with Robert Shelton, Melody Maker (29 July 1978)
“Poets are all who love, who feel great truths,
And tell them; and the truth of truths is love.”
Scene XVI, The Hesperian Sphere
Festus (1839)
Viktor E. Frankl book Man's Search for Meaning
Man's Search for Meaning (1946; 1959; 1984)
Context: A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth — that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. … For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words, "The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory."
“Words are the only bullets in truth’s bandolier. And poets are the snipers.”
Dan Simmons book Hyperion
Source: Hyperion (1989), Chapter 3 (p. 192)
“Poets and anarchists are always the first to go.
—Where.
—To the frontline. Wherever it is.”
Giannina Braschi book Yo-Yo Boing!
Yo-Yo Boing! (Spanglish novel, 1998)
