Quote by Dana Gioia | TrueQuotes

""The second observation is that poetry is a universal human art. Despite post-modern theories of cultural relativism that assert there are no human universals, there exists a massive and compelling body of empirical data, collected and documented by anthropologists, linguists, and archeologists that demonstrates there is no human society, however isolated, that has not developed and employed poetry as a cultural practice. Most of this poetry, of course, has been oral poetry. Many of these cultures never developed writing. But the fact remains—and it is a demonstrable fact, not mere opinion—that every society has developed a special class of speech, shaped by apprehensible patterns of sound, namely, poetry" (9-10)."

Quote Details

Added by wikiquote-import-bot

Unverified quote

0 likes

Essayists from the United States Literary critics Editors from the United States Critics from the United States Translators from the United States

Original Language: English

Available Languages (1)

English (Original)

Sources

Imported from EN Wikiquote

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Dana_Gioia

Revision History

No revisions have been submitted for this quote.

Categories

Essayists from the United States Literary critics Editors from the United States Critics from the United States Translators from the United States

Dana Gioia

80 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Dana Gioia →

Related Quotes

"Money. You don't know where it's been, but you put it where your mouth is. And it talks."

Essayists From The United States Literary Critics Editors From The United States

"The music that of common speech but slanted so that each detail sounds unexpected as a sharp inserted in a simple scale."

Essayists From The United States Literary Critics Editors From The United States

"Twisting through the thorn-thick underbrush, scratched and exhausted, one turns suddenly to find an unexpected waterf…"

Essayists From The United States Literary Critics Editors From The United States

"Yet the stones remain less real to those who cannot name them, or read the mute syllables graven in silica. To see a …"

Essayists From The United States Literary Critics Editors From The United States

"This is a prayer, inchoate and unfinished, for you, my love, my loss, my lesion, a rosary of words to count out time'…"

Essayists From The United States Literary Critics Editors From The United States

"We are not as we were. Death has been our pentecost."

Essayists From The United States Literary Critics Editors From The United States

"My blessed California, you are so wise. You render death abstract, efficient, clean. Your afterlife is only real esta…"

Essayists From The United States Literary Critics Editors From The United States

"We lived in places that we never knew. We could not name the birds perched on our sill, Or see the trees we cut down …"

Essayists From The United States Literary Critics Editors From The United States

"Teach us the names of what we have destroyed."

Essayists From The United States Literary Critics Editors From The United States

"How many voices have escaped you until now, the venting furnace, the floorboards underfoot, the steady accusations of…"

Essayists From The United States Literary Critics Editors From The United States