“It is worthwhile adding that the power of the poem to teach not only sensibilities and the subtle movements of the spirit but knowledge, real lasting felt knowledge, is going mostly unnoticed among our scholars. The body of knowledge locked into and releasable from poetry can replace practically any university in the Republic. First things first, then: the primal importance of a poem is what it can add to the individual mind.Poetry is the voice of a poet at its birth, and the voice of a people in its ultimate fulfillment as a successful and useful work of art.” PeopleMindFirstsArtRealBodySpiritIndividualFeltVoiceTeachSuccessfulMovementPoetBirthUltimateImportanceAddUniversityFulfillmentSubtlePoetry IsLastingWorks Of ArtRepublicWorthwhileScholarLockedSensibilityPrimalUnnoticedFirst Things First Author:Guy Davenport
“The modern sensibility attempts to drain the contents of experience; these Greek poets strive to state the fact so poignantly that it becomes an ever-flowing spring as Sappho says, "More real than real, more gold than gold.” RealStatesFactsModernPoetSpringGoldStriveGreekSensibilityDrains Book:Classics Revisited Source: Classics Revisited
“The fine gifts of temperament and imagination which are essential to the production of true poetry are often accompanied by morbid sensibility. The soul capable of ecstasy and transport must pay its price in suffering; he who walks upon the heights must sometimes grovel in the dust.” SoulSometimesSufferingImaginationWalksPayPoetFineEssentialsCapableProductionsDustHeightEcstasySensibilityTemperamentTransportMorbid Author:Myrtle Reed
“To my generation no other English poet seemed so perfectly to express the sensibility of a male adolescent. If I do not now turn to him very often, I am eternally grateful to him for the joy he gave me in my youth.” IfsJoyTurnsGenerationsYouthPoetGratefulMalesSensibilityMy Generation Author:W. H. Auden
“Tennyson and Browning are poets, and they think; but they do not feel their thought as immediately as the odour of a rose. A thought to Donne was an experience; it modified his sensibility.” ThinkingFeelsPoetRoseSensibilityDonneTennyson Book:Selected essays Source: Selected essays
“I don't think that you can say by any stretch of the imagination that all Wisconsin or Brooklyn-based poets write in a particular way. Similar sensibilities can spring up next to each other in the flower bed, or across oceans.” ThinkingWayWritingNextImaginationParticularPoetFlowerBedOceanSpringSensibilityBrooklynWisconsin Author:Matthea Harvey
“What poetry does above all else is develop sensibility. And that's what makes poetry so dangerous. That's why poetry is so good at undermining governments and so bad at building them. There's nothing harder to organize than a group of poets.” DoeGovernmentGroupsDangerousBuildingPoetHarderPoetry IsSensibilityOrganizeUndermining Author:Sam Hamill