A poem is not an expression, nor is it an object. Yet it somewhat partakes of both. What … - Hayden Carruth

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The degree of consciousness corresponds to the degree of density or the speed of vibrations. The denser the matter, the less conscious it is.

Hayden Carruth

A poem is not an expression, nor is it an object. Yet it somewhat partakes of both. What a poem is is never to be known, for which I have learned to be grateful.

Expression, Grateful, I Have Learned, Object

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I had always been aware that the Universe is sad; everything in it, animate or inanimate, the wild creatures, the stones, the stars, was enveloped in the great sadness, pervaded by it. Existence had no use. It was without end or reason. The most beautfiul things in it, a flower or a song, as well as the most compelling, a desire or a thought, were pointless. So great a sorrow. And I knew that the only rest from my anxiety—for I had been trembling even in infancy—lay in acknowledging and absorbing this sadness.

Creatures, Enveloped, Everything, Flower, Song, Stars

My poems, I think, exist in a state of tension between the love of natural beauty and the fear of natural meaninglessness or absurdity.

Absurdity, Beauty, Natural, State, States, Thinking

Why speak of the use of poetry? Poetry is what uses us.

Poetry, Poetry Is, Speak, Use

My curiosity, alas, is not the kind that can be satisfied by objective knowledge. Plato said that opinion is worthless and that only knowledge counts, which is a neat formulation. But melancholy [men] from the northern mists understand that opinion is all there is. The great questions transcend fact, and discourse is a process of personality. Knowledge cannot respond to knowledge. And wisdom? Is it not opinion refined, opinion killed and resuscitated upward? Maybe Plato would have agreed with this.

Counts, Men, Personality, Plato, Satisfied, Wisdom

Now I am almost entirely love.

Entirely, Love

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Consciousness, Degree, Degrees, Density, Matter, Speed

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Beautiful, Forever, Success, Understand, Understanding, War