formalist-poets

"We enter life and thus inherit The kingdom of the human voice. The Word is Word because we share it. Wonder encourages our choice To sort out life’s conflicting data, To come to terms with its traumata, To shape ourselves to nothing less Than reasoned self-forgetfulness."

"Because comparatively few poets today write in meters, rhymes, and stanzas, my use of these has resulted in my being labeled a 'formalist.' But I find this term meaningless and even objectionable. It suggests, among other things, an interest in style rather than substance, whereas I believe that the two are mutually vital in any successful poem. I employ the traditional instruments of verse simply because I love the symmetries and surprises that they pro-duce and because meter especially allows me to render feelings and ideas more flexibly and precisely than I otherwise could. This preference is personal and aesthetic, how-ever, I have never imagined that it provided me with access to cultural or spiritual virtue. And despite allegations to the contrary about Missing Measures, I have never said that vers libre is somehow wrong and immoral or that meter is somehow right and pure. The experimental school of Pound, Eliot, Lawrence, and Williams has its own beauties and achievements. But we can prize them justly and build on them, it seems to me, only if we retain a knowledge and appreciation of the time-tested principles of standard versification. Free verse cannot be free, unless there is something for it to be free of."

"She got to looking out At the lights across the channel, and really felt sad, Thinking of all the wine and enormous beds And blandishments in French and the perfumes."

"Much casual death had drained away their souls."

"No prayers or incense rose up in those hours Which grew to be years, and every day came mute Ghosts from the ovens, sifting through crisp air, And settled upon his eyes in a black soot."

"And sometimes I bring her a bottle of Nuit d' Amour."

"Running to fat, but dependable as they come."

"No light, no light in the blue Polish eye."

"To have been brought All the way down from London, and then be addressed As a sort of mournful cosmic last resort Is really tough on a girl, and she was pretty."

"And then she said one or two unprintable things."

"So there stood Matthew Arnold and this girl With the cliffs of England crumbling away behind them, And he said to her, "Try to be true to me, And I'll do the same for you, for things are bad All over, etc., etc." ... But all the time he was talking she had in mind The notion of what his whiskers would feel like On the back of her neck."

"The Lüger hovered lightly in its glove."

"Not ringed but rare, not gilled but polyp-like, having sprung up overnight— These mushrooms of the gods, resembling human organs uprooted, rooted only on the air,"

"Tasting of the sweet damp woods and of the rain one inch above the meadow: It was like feasting upon air."

"Thinking of you this evening, I think of mystery; I think of umbrellas of crystal Shading a cinnamon sea;"

"A silver-scaled dragon with jaws flaming red Sits at my elbow and toasts my bread. I hand him fat slices, and then, one by one, He hands them back when he sees they are done."

"I know a place all fennel-green and fine Far from the white ice cap, the glacial flaw, Where shy mud hen and dainty porcupine Dance in delight by a quivering pawpaw;"

"And life is a rain-swept mirror Through which perpetually A girl with bright hair flowing, Dappled dark coat blowing, Into the unknown, knowing, Walks with me."

"Now touch the air softly, Step gently. One, two... I’ll love you till roses Are robin’s-egg blue; I’ll love you till gravel Is eaten for bread, And lemons are orange, And lavender’s red."

"The lariat snaps; the cowboy rolls His pack, and mounts and rides away. Back to the land the cowboy goes."

"The long-haired Yak has long black hair, He lets it grow — he doesn't care. He lets it grow and grow and grow, He lets it trail along the stair. Does he ever go to the barbershop? NO! How wild and woolly and devil-may-care A long-haired Yak with long black hair Would look when perched in a barber chair!"

"And I’ll love you as long As the furrow the plow, As However is Ever, And Ever is Now."

"He hangs in the hall by his black cravat, The ladies faint, and the children holler: Only my Daddy could look like that, And I love my Daddy like he loves his Dollar."

"Women have no wilderness in them, They are provident instead, Content in the tight hot cell of their hearts To eat dusty bread."

"The authentic presence of goodness is love and its manifestation in virtue; the authentic presence of truth is to be seen in the culture's conformity to reason, properly understood as an engagement with the objective reality beyond the confines of egocentric subjectivism; the authentic presence of the beautiful is a reverence for the beauty of Creation and creativity, properly perceived in the outpouring of gratitude which is the fruit of humility. A society informed and animated by such a culture is truly civilized. A civilized man is not animated by a desire to shape himself into an image of his "self," which is itself unknowable, but is willing to allow himself to be shaped into an image of the perfect Person beyond himself."

"Solzhenitsyn has re-written George Orwell's novel, using the facts of his life as his pen. He represents the victory of Winston Smith. Truth, it seems, is not only stranger than fiction; it has a happier ending."

"was, or should be, a key to the treasures of mystical experience, a means of expressing through sub-creation man's unity with the primary Creation of which he is part. It could also, in its highest form, be an expression of the homesickness of the soul in spiritual exile, a longing for that eternal realm for which the soul begins to ache."

"Whether it's conscious or subconscious, intentional or unintentional, a work of art always embodies and incarnates in some sense the deepest-held beliefs of an author. Therefore, an author's theology and philosophy, in the context of the times in which the author lives, are clearly going to inform the work."

"Today, after the Soviet Union's demise, and after the statues of Stalin have been ignominiously toppled, it is easy to forget the sheer enormity of Solzhenitsyn's achievement. Quite simply, what he did was considered to be impossible. It was beyond belief that one man could defy the communist state and survive. It was even more unbelievable that he should not only survive, but that he should play a significant role in the state's downfall and that he should outlive the state itself. Solzhenitsyn's life and example flew in the face of the "reality" of the "realists"."

"All the things we hide in water Hoping we won't see them go. Forests growing under water Press against the ones we know."

"The idea that you write to express yourself seems to me revolting. The idea that you write to glorify or to make glorious the art of expressiveness seems to me spot on."

"To say a poet is to be condemned or inaccessible because she invokes some fields of vision which we have difficulty in grasping; this seems to me a crass kind of bullying."

"I try to make a distinction between enjoyment and joy. You are only prepared to enjoy what you already have a taste for; wheras joy is shocking and surprising."

"Shakespeare clearly heard many voices. No secret: voicing means hearing, at a price a gift"

"Thus I grind to conclusion."

"I write to astonish myself"

"The years will not answer for what they have done, that much is certain. There is no shaking them, we might have foreseen this but refused."

"I have learned one thing: not to look down Too much upon the damned."

""One cannot lose what one has not possessed." So much for that abrasive gem. I can lose what I want. I want you."

"I wish I understood myself more clearly or less well."

"Or say it is Pentecost: the hawthorn-tree, set with coagulate magnified flowers of may, blooms in a haze of light; old chalk-pits brim with seminal verdue from the roots of time. Landscape is like revelation; it is both singular crystal and the remotest things. Cloud-shadows of seasons revisit the earth, odourless myrrh bourne by the wandering kings."

"Primroses; salutations; the miry skull of a half-eaten ram; vicious wounds in earth opening. What seraphs are afoot."

"An achieved poem is always beautiful in its own way, though such a way will many times strike people as harsh and repellent."

"September fattens on vines. Roses flake from the wall. The smoke of harmless fires drifts to my eyes."

"For this creating to take place (as it does from time to time) words have to be accepted as heirs of their forebears, as we are of ours. And in each case, what exists is often only a bankrupt inheritance; or the hinterlands of the unspoken."

"Did Péguy kill Juarés? Did he incite"

"Self-astonishment is achieved when, by some process I can't fathom, common words are moved, or move themselves, into clusters of meaning so intense that they seem to stand up from the page, three-dimensional almost."

"I think men and women who write poetry or write music or paint are finally responsible for what they do. They are entitled to praise for any success they achieve and they should not complain of just criticism."

"It is to be hoped—I mean, I hope—that the poetry I have been writing since 1992 squares up to, takes the measure of, weighs up, the violent evasions and stock affronts of the oligarchy of fraud. I don't, even so, write poems to be polemical; I write to create a being of beautiful energy."

"The Mystery of the Charity of Charles Péguy,"