The English are always degrading truths into facts. When a truth becomes a fact it loses all its intellectual value.
Works of art imitate and provoke other works of art, the process is the source of art itself.
Reading poetry is an adventure in renewal, a creative act, a perpetual beginning, a rebirth of wonder.
Language is an impure medium. Speech is public property and words are the soiled products, not of nature, but of society, which circulates and uses them for a thousand different ends.
Poetry connects us to what is deepest in ourselves. It gives us access to our own feelings, which are often shadowy, and engages us in the art of making meaning. It widens the space of our inner lives. It is a magical, mysterious, inexplicable (though not incomprehensible) event in language.
I was surprised recently to find a book called "Poetry in Persons" that's coming out about visit to poets to a class that Pearl London gave.
Poetry never loses its appeal. Sometimes its audience wanes and sometimes it swells like a wave. But the essential mystery of being human is always going to engage and compel us. We're involved in a mystery. Poetry uses words to put us in touch with that mystery. We're always going to need it.
Roller-skates and disco are a lot of fun, I'm much too young and stupid to operate a gun.
No matter how old you are, if a little kid hands you a toy phone. . . you answer it.
Education is the preparation of the individual for reciprocal union with society; the preparation of the individual so that he can help his fellow-men and in return receive and appreciate their help.
Every politician - FDR, Lyndon Johnson, Abraham Lincoln, Barack Obama - they're all conservative by nature. They are part of the big thing and they're moving in a very constrained world.