“It is well to start by distinguishing the few really great - the major novelists who count in the same way as the major poets, in the sense that they not only change the possibilities of the art for practitioners and readers, but that they are significant in terms of the human awareness they promote; awareness of the possibilities of life.” WayHumansWellsArtTermAwarenessPossibilityPoetReaderMajorsSignificantNovelistsReally Great Author:F. R. Leavis
“Patricia Smith is one of the best poets around and has been for a long time. Her Blood Dazzler is full of capacious soul and formal inventiveness: the compassion and artfulness necessary to capture the tragedies and Tragedy of Katrina. Smith is herself a storm of beautiful, frightening talent. Her words will wash you or wash you away. I consider this new book a major literary event.” LongHas BeensBookSoulBeautifulCompassionBloodTalentEventsPoetMajorsLong TimeTragedyStormCaptureFrighteningFormalNew BooksKatrinaInventivenessBest Poet Author:Terrance Hayes
“One of the great unresolved psychological enigmas of the modern western world is the question of what or who has persuaded us to accept as virtually axiomatic a self-view and a world-view that demand we reject out of hand the wisdom and vision of our major philosophers and poets in order to imprison our thought and our very selves in the materialist, mechanical and dogmatic torture-chamber devised by purely quantitative and third-rate scientific minds.” WorldMindSelfHandsOrderViewsAcceptingVisionModernPoetDemandMajorsThirdsWesternRatePhilosopherPsychologicalTortureRejectsOur ThoughtsChamberWestern WorldWorld ViewDogmaticEnigma Book:Human image, world image: the death and resurrection of sacred cosmology Source: Human image, world image: the death and resurrection of sacred cosmology
“When I see that the nineteenth century has crowned the idolatry of Art with the deification of Love, so that every poet is supposed to have pierced to the holy of holies when he has announced that Love is the Supreme, or the Enough, or the All, I feel that Art was safer in the hands of the most fanatical of Cromwell's major generals than it will be if ever it gets into mine.” IfsFeelsArtEnoughHandsLove IsCenturyMinesPoetHolyMajorsSupremeIdolatryNineteenth CenturyCromwell Book:Three Plays for Puritans Source: Three Plays for Puritans
“I think we've come to a kind of splinter period in poetry. These tiny little bright fragments of observation - and not produced under sufficient pressure - some of it's very skillful, but I don't think there's anywhere a discernible major poet in the process of emerging; or if he is, I ain't seen him.” IfsThinkingKindLittlesProcessPoetPeriodsMajorsPressureTinyObservationSufficientFragmentsEmergingSkillfulSplinters Author:Conrad Aiken
“The photo-journalist and the photo-poet are both important. The problem is to separate the major objectives of the various groups and not to attribute qualities and intentions where they do not belong.” ImportantProblemQualityGroupsPoetMajorsIntentionVariousObjectivesJournalistAttributes Author:Ansel Adams