Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by W. D. Snodgrass

Quote by W. D. Snodgrass

Author

W. D. Snodgrass
W. D. Snodgrass

W. D. Snodgrass was an American poet celebrated for his contributions to the literary landscape of the 1950s and 1960s. His poetry delved into themes of love, war, and the human experience, with his collection 'Heart's Needle' being a notable achievement. Born on January 5, 1926, and passing away on January 13, 2009, Snodgrass's work has left a lasting impact on American poetry. more

You May Also Like

“Esse est percipi, to be is to be perceived, said good old Berkeley; but, according to most philosophers, he was wrong. Yet, obviously, there are things for which the adage holds. Perception, trivially, to begin with. If elements of conscious awareness--pains, tickles, feelings of heat and cold, sensory qualia of colors, sounds, and the like--have any existence, it must consist in their being perceived by a subject.... This shows, of course, that such experiences are epiphenomenal, at least with respect to the physical world.”

“The mastery of one's phonemes may be compared to the violinist's mastery of fingering. The violin string lends itself to a continuous gradation of tones, but the musician learns the discrete intervals at which to stop the string in order to play the conventional notes. We sound our phonemes like poor violinists, approximating each time to a fancied norm, and we receive our neighbor's renderings indulgently, mentally rectifying the more glaring inaccuracies.”