Here’s a collection of thoughts that a friend pulled together. I recognize myself and my creative efforts in here. Not just verse and lyrics but painting, photography, music, and on and on.
A good poem is a contribution to reality.
The world is never the same
once a good poem has been added to it.
A good poem helps
to change the shape of the universe,
helps to extend
everyone’s knowledge of himself
and the world around him.
~ Dylan Thomas
—
To be a poet
is a condition,
not a profession.
A poem . . .
begins as a lump in the throat,
a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. . . .
It finds the thought
and the thought finds the words.
~ Robert Frost
—
Put your ear down close to your soul
and listen hard.
~ Anne Sexton
—
You ask whether your verses are good.
You ask me.
You have asked other before.
You send them to magazines.
You compare them with other poems,
and you are disturbed when certain editors reject your efforts.
Now I beg you to give up all that.
You are looking outward,
and that, above all, you should not do now.
Nobody can counsel and help you, nobody.
There is only one single way.
Go into yourself.
Seach for the reason that bids you write.
This above all, ask yourself
in the stillest hour of your night:
Must I write?
~ Rainer Maria Rilke
—
How so I explain these poems?
Not at all.
I quit teaching in colleges
because it seemed so criminal
to explain works of art.
.
~ Anne Sexton
