“In the Middle Ages, the troubadour poets invented the concept of courtly love--a fantasy love, a noble passion, which was also extra-marital and thus inevitably thwarted, illicit, adulterous. One of the medieval terms for it was amour honestus (honest love). I've always wondered why this passionate ideal--masochistic, spiritual-travelled with such wildfire throughout Europe. My poem, a ghazal, takes up the subject.” AgeSpiritualPassionTermFantasyMiddleSubjectsHonestPoetConceptsEuropeIdealsPassionateNobleExtrasMiddle AgesMedievalAmourWildfiresMasochisticTroubadoursFantasy LoveHonest Love Author:Edward Hirsch
“The normal present connects the past and the future through limitation. Contiguity results, crystallization by means of solidification. There also exists, however, a spiritual present that identifies past and future through dissolution, and this mixture is the element, the atmosphere of the poet.” MeanPastSpiritualResultsPoetElementsNormalLimitationAtmosphereMixturesDissolution Author:Novalis
“Imagination is the supreme endowment of the poet and romanticist. It is a kind of second sight, which conveys the owner of it to places he has never seen, and surrounds him with strange circumstances of which he is merely the spiritual eyewitness.” KindSpiritualImaginationStrangePoetCircumstancesSightSupremeOwnersSurroundEndowmentEyewitnesses Author:Marie Corelli
“It takes something of a poet to apprehend and get into the depth, the lusciousness, the spiritual life of a great poem. And so we must be in some way like God in order that we may see God as He is.” WayMayGodSpiritualOrderPoetDepthSpiritual Life Author:Edwin Hubbel Chapin
“Seeking the Cave is part travelogue, part literary history, and part spiritual journey. James Lenfestey is a lively and entertaining tour guide. Modest, funny, curious, and wide open to the world, he gives us perceptive glimpses of Chinese culture, ancient to contemporary, and into what it means to be a poet, both now and twelve centuries ago. The account of his quest to find Han Shan's cave is a delight from beginning to end.” WorldGivingMeanEndsSpiritualCultureJourneyCenturyPoetAccountsAncientDelightSeekingWideGuidesContemporaryCuriousChineseTwelveEntertainingQuestsModestGlimpseCavesLivelySpiritual JourneyChinese CultureTour Guides Author:Chase Twichell
“... in a history of spiritual rupture, a social compact built on fantasy and collective secrets, poetry becomes more necessary than ever: it keeps the underground aquifers flowing; it is the liquid voice that can wear through stone.” SpiritualSpiritPoetrySocialVoiceSecretFantasyPoetBuiltStonesCollectivesPoetry IsLiquidCompactRuptureAquifers Book:What Is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics (Expanded Edition) Source: What Is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics (Expanded Edition)
“Poetry is essentially the antithesis of Metaphysics: Metaphysics purge the mind of the senses and cultivate the disembodiment of the spiritual; Poetry is all passionate and feeling and animates the inanimate; Metaphysics are most perfect when concerned with universals; Poetry, when most concerned with particulars.” MindFeelingsSpiritualPoetryPerfectPoetConcernedPhilosophicalPassionateSensesPoetry IsMetaphysicsAntithesis Author:Samuel Beckett
“The spiritual kinship between Lincoln and Whitman was founded upon their Americanism, their essential Westernism. Whitman had grown up without much formal education; Lincoln had scarcely any education. One had become the notable poet of the day; one the orator of the Gettsyburg Address. It was inevitable that Whitman as a poet should turn with a feeling of kinship to Lincoln, and even without any association or contact feel that Lincoln was his.” FeelsShouldFeelingsSpiritualTurnsPoetEssentialsContactInevitableAddressesAssociationFormalNotableKinshipOratorsFormal EducationAmericanism Author:Edgar Lee Masters
“I was a tiny bug. Now a mountain. I was left behind. Now honored at the head. You healed my wounded hunger and anger, and made me a poet who sings about joy.” MadeSpiritualJoyLeftGrowthBehindsPoetMountainHungerTinySpiritual GrowthWoundedHonoredBugsLeft BehindHealed Author:Rumi
“genius is original, unique; and in whatever form it may develop itself is the greatest gift that can be given to man, the strongest known link between the material life we have and the spiritual life that we can only guess at. Every great poet, painter, or musician - every inventor or man of science, every fine actor or orator, comes to us as the exponent of something diviner than we know. We cannot understand it, but we feel it, and acknowledge it.” KnowsMenFeelsMaySpiritualFormActorsGivenKnownPoetMaterialsFineGeniusMusicianUniqueOriginalsPainterAcknowledgeStrongestLinksSpiritual LifeInventorGreatest GiftsGreat PoetOratorsExponents Author:Dinah Maria Murlock Craik
“Pilgrims are poets who create by taking journeys.” SpiritualSpiritualityJourneyPoetPilgrimSpiritual Journey Author:H. Richard Niebuhr
“Rumi is perhaps the greatest mystical poet who ever lived, one of the greatest poets of the Persian language. He was able to express practically all aspects of the spiritual life and our existential situation in the world today as human beings in beautiful Persian poetry.” WorldHumansTodayAbleBeautifulSpiritualLanguageHuman BeingsSituationPoetAspectSpiritual LifeExistentialMysticalWorld TodayPersianPersian Poetry Author:Seyyed Hossein Nasr