“To imagine is the characteristic act, not of the poet's mind, or the painter's, or the scientist's, but of the mind of man.” MenMindImaginationImaginePoetScientistPainterCharacteristics Author:Jacob Bronowski
“The poet Melvin B. Tolson once said "A civilization is judged only in its decline." That made sense to me. I would imagine the same is true for poets and tennis players.” MadeSaidImaginePlayerPoetCivilizationTennisJudgedDeclineTennis Player Author:Nikki Giovanni
“Every dude in your high school wasn't striving to be the best poet because then he'd get all the girls, right? But you could imagine a society in which that were the case.” SchoolGirlCasesImaginePoetHigh SchoolStriveBeing The BestStriving To Be The BestBest Poet Author:Chad Harbach
“Auden, who asked two things of an imagined world-that it be somehow like ours and somehow unlike-would be Ben Marcus's ideal reader, yet even without the poet's dire program, I am altogether taken by this hilarious and sexy alternative universe. Just imagine! it is all done with words instead of mirrors, so much more reliable and so much more heartbreaking. Thus Prospero enthralls his crew.” WorldTwoDoneWould BeUniverseTakenImaginePoetReaderIdealsProgramMirrorsSexyAlternativesTwo ThingsCrewHeartbreakingAudenProspero Author:Richard Howard
“It is unwise to equate scientific activity with what we call reason, poetic activity with what we call imagination. Without the imaginative leap from facts to generalisation, no theoretic discovery in science is made. The poet, on the other hand, must not imagine but reason--that is to say, he must exercise a great deal of consciously directed thought in the selection and rejection of his data: there is a technical logic, a poetic reasoning in his choice of the words, rhythms and images by which a poem's coherence is achieved.” MadeReasonFactsHandsSciencePoetryChoicesImaginationDealsImaginePoetExerciseActivityDiscoveryLogicRhythmDataRejectionReasoningPoeticLeapSelectionImaginativeUnwiseCoherenceDiscovery In ScienceGeneralisation Author:Cecil Day-Lewis
“Oh, can I really believe the poet's tales, that when one first sees the object of one's love, one imagines one has seen her long ago, that all love like all knowledge is remembrance, that love too has its prophecies in the individual.” FirstsBelieveLongIndividualImagineObjectsPoetTalesLong AgoProphecyRemembrance Author:Soren Kierkegaard
“I believe that Jesus was both priest and poet. Imagine those powerful parables! My experience as a priest tells me it's not possible to reach the hearts of the congregants without a bit of poetry and storytelling.” BelieveHeartJesusI BelieveBitsPowerfulImaginePoetStorytellingPriestsParables Author:Uwem Akpan
“The ideal audience the poet imagines consists of the beautiful who go to bed with him, the powerful who invite him to dinner and tell him secrets of state, and his fellow-poets. The actual audience he gets consists of myopic schoolteachers, pimply young men who eat in cafeterias, and his fellow-poets. This means, in fact, he writes for his fellow-poets.” MenWritingMeanStatesFactsBeautifulYoungPowerfulSecretAudienceImaginePoetBedIdealsFellowsDinnerYoung ManInvitesCafeteriaMyopic Author:W. H. Auden
“I walk with Federico Garcia Lorca around the Upper West Side in Manhattan because that was a neighborhood he lived in and I imagine walking around Paris with Cesar Vallejo, a great Peruvian poet who lived in Paris. And I kind of create the walk as a kind of drama of my apprenticeship.” KindSidesWalksImaginePoetWalkingDramaWestParisNeighborhoodManhattanApprenticeshipWest SideLorcaPeruvians Author:Edward Hirsch