“Every poem that works is like a metaphor of the whole mind writing, the solution of all the oppositions and imbalances going on at that time.”

— Ted Hughes

The Paris Review interview
Context: Every poem that works is like a metaphor of the whole mind writing, the solution of all the oppositions and imbalances going on at that time. When the mind finds the balance of all those things and projects it, that’s a poem. It’s a kind of hologram of the mental condition at that moment, which then immediately changes and moves on to some other sort of balance and rearrangement. What counts is that it be a symbol of that momentary wholeness. That’s how I see it.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Every poem that works is like a metaphor of the whole mind writing, the solution of all the oppositions and imbalances …" by Ted Hughes?

Ted Hughes 55

English poet and children's writer 1930–1998

A.R. Ammons (1926–2001) American poet

Paris Review interview (1996)
Context: I’ve always been highly energized and have written poems in spurts. From the god-given first line right through the poem. And I don’t write two or three lines and then come back the next day and write two or three more; I write the whole poem at one sitting and then come back to it from time to time over the months or years and rework it.

“The world is emblematic. Parts of speech are metaphors, because the whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson book Nature

Source: Nature

“He who would write heroic poems should make his whole life a heroic poem.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

Life of Schiller.
1820s, Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (1827–1855)

“Suicide is, after all, the opposite of the poem.”

Anne Sexton (1928–1974) poet from the United States

“If I wasn't writing poems, I'd be washing my hands all the time.”

Sherman Alexie (1966) Native American author and filmmaker

“Buddhism is a practice, not a belief, and every Buddhist is, in some way, lay clergy — involved in the way a scientist is involved in his or her work, or in the way a writer's mind is involved in writing, present in the background, all the time.”

Francisco Varela (1946–2001) Chilean biologist

The Emergent Self (1995)

“All objects project their whole image and likeness, diffused and mingled in the whole of the atmosphere, opposite to themselves.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), II Linear Perspective
Context: All objects project their whole image and likeness, diffused and mingled in the whole of the atmosphere, opposite to themselves. The image of every point of the bodily surface, exists in every part of the atmosphere. All the images of the objects are in every part of the atmosphere.

“The human mind is [a poet's] individual mind at first, but as soon as he writes a poem it becomes our [the readers'] minds too. There is no self-expression in [a poet's] poem, because once the poem is there the individual [poet] has disappeared. …there is really no such thing as self-expression in literature.”

Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist

"Quotes", The Educated Imagination (1963), Talk 3: Giants in Time

“Emerson writes in his Journal that all men try their hands at poetry, but few know which their poems are. The poets are not those who write poems, but those who know which of the things they write are poems.”

Carl Andre (1935) American artist

Quote from a 1962 essay by Andre; as quoted in ' Objects Are What We Aren't' https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/02/26/objects-are-what-we-arent/, by Andy Battaglia; The Parish Review, February 26, 2015

“We are all writing God's poem.”

Anne Sexton (1928–1974) poet from the United States

As quoted by Erica Jong, in "Into the lion's den" in The Guardian (26 October 2000) http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2000/oct/26/features11.g2

“Every poem that works is like a metaphor of the whole mind writing, the solution of all the oppositions and imbalances going on at that time.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Ted Hughes 55

Related quotes

Related topics