Without honesty, there is nothing.
Excellence is form.
Rhetoric and Poetry are not enemies.
Poetry is closer to speech than to song.
The ego is a gift from God; give it away.
Form is a gift of the ego.
Translation is a duty.
Everything is holy, especially doubt.
The proof of the poem is in the speaking.
No poet writes to be memorable.
Only what is memorable is poetry.
A poem and poetry are quite distinct.
Suffering hallows.
Say nothing of God, and he will say nothing of you.
Heroes:
Callimachus, Lucretius, Vergil, Horace, Skelton, Sir Thomas Wyatt, Pierre
Ronsard, Thomas Nashe, Shakespeare, John Donne, Andrew Marvell, Alexander
Pope, Emily Dickinson, Walter Savage Landor, George Meredith, Georg Trakl,
C. P. Cavafy, R. M. Rilke, T. S. Eliot, Pär Lagerkvist, Basin Bunting,
Bagio Marin, Horace, Edith Sitwell, Louis MacNeice, Lawrence Durrell,
Stevie Smith, F. T. Prince, Geoffrey Hill, Anne Stevenson, C. H. Sisson,
John Heath-Stubbs, Peter Porter, Derek Walcot, Douglas Oliver, Donaldas
Kajokas, Ian Caws, Ian Duhig, Stephen Watts, John Gallas, Prefab Sprout,
Geneva.
Villains:
Cecil Day-Lewis, Louise Glück, U2.
Aesthetics, Morals:
It is important to insist upon the interpenentration of the notions of
moral and aesthetic beauty. In particular, on how aesthetic values are
in some sense characteristically passive and receptive, whereas moral
values characteristically express themselves actively and, often, as vetoes.
Furthermore, in a plausible story about developmental psychology, perception
precedes action, and since children tend to perceive and to respond to
the world as a series of sounds shapes and textures before construing
it as a plane of actions and wants (although there is an obvious tension
with some forms of psychology here), a case can be made for aesthetic
values being more basic, albeit less important in one’s sense of
self-value, than moral ones. After all, almost any action or activity
or product or process can be the object of aesthetic value, whereas very
few actions are properly to be involved with (though note the change of
formulation from 'the object of') moral value. One feels compelled
to suggest that Truth is Beauty, and Beauty Truth.