Quotes About Interpretation

If an ancient man saw planes two thousand years ago He would've thought they were birds Or angels from another world Or messengers from other planets.

Poems are difficult to silence.

Works of art are of an infinite solitude, and no means of approach is so useless as criticism. Only love can touch and hold them and be fair to them.

My old teacher's definition of poetry is an attempt to understand.

Poetry is the scholar's art.

When I say 'God' it is poetry and not theology

What is important-what lasts-in another language is not what is said but what is written. For the essence of an age, we look to its poetry and its prose, not its talk shows.

The demand that poetry be immediately understandable to everyone is truly absurd.

Poetry and art are the breath of life to her.

I think poetry involves heightened noticing or imagining as well as creating a certain made shape. On the other hand, that shape can be made just by pointing at something and saying, "That's a poem".

Poetry cannot be translation

I cannot understand why poetry is not taught at schools as a way of seeing, a quick, untiring path to essentials.

Literature is always something - it is either story or poetry, ideally both. That is, you always know what it is and even if the interpretation is not available, the experience of language is.

I'd rather call prose poems something else, for clarity - something like "poetic prose," prose that contains a quality of poetry, but not poems.

I'm a firm believer in the idea that theater excels over film and TV in its ability to let people play with poetry.

[The story of Adam and Eve] it's poetry. One must interpret it as poetry. The first 11 chapters of Genesis [the Primeval History] are absolutely remarkable.

I go to a lot of museums, I read a ton of poetry - anything that's a creative expression of oneself, I find really inspiring.

Poetry doesn't function by saying things straightforwardly because the language is too imprecise, too limited often, to address the underlying subject of most poems.

Often when I write poetry I don't quite know what I'm saying myself. I mean, I can't restate the poem. The meaning of the poem is the poem.

A bad poem is one that vanishes into meaning.

My novels and poems are meant to be read aloud. That's why jazz musicians have been able to adapt my stuff.

when a poem says something that could not have been said in any other way, in music, prose, sculpture, movement or paint, then it is poetry.

I don't think poetry will die, but I think that poetry does demand a certain kind of attention to language.

It is impossible to translate poetry. Can you translate music?