To give a sense of the freshness or vividness of life is a valid purpose for poetry.

The poet makes silk dresses out of worms It is life that we are trying to get at in poetry In poetry at least the imagination must not detach itself from reality All poetry is experimental poetry Sentimentality is a failure of feeling All of our ideas come from the natural world: Trees=umbrellas. A poet looks at the world somewhat as a man looks at a woman A poem should stimulate the sense of living and of being alive oetry is! "and should be!# for the poet! a source of pleasure and satisfaction! not a source of honors. Thought is an infection. In the case of certain thoughts! it becomes an epidemic. After one has abandoned a belief in god! poetry is that essence which takes its place as life$s redemption. oetry is a means of redemption The final belief is to believe in a fiction! which you know to be a fiction! there being nothing else. The ex%uisite truth is to know that it is a fiction and that you believe in it willingly. &ine and music are not good until afternoon. 'ut poetry is like prayer in that it is most effective in solitude and in the times of solitude as! for example! in the earliest morning. There is nothing in life except what one thinks of it &e live in the mind There is no difference between god and his temple (oney is a kind of poetry The tongue is an eye )od is a symbol for something that can as well take other forms! as! for example! the form of high poetry. The body is the great poem

I like the idea of a book as a talisman to take the place of a rabbit*s foot: something that guards one in the midst of everything profane. All the great things have been denied and we live in an intricacy of new and local mythologies! political! economic. +verything is complicated, if that were not so! life and poetry and everything else would be a bore. erhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake erhaps there are times of inherent excellence The day of the sun is like the day of a king. It is a promenade in the morning! a sitting on the throne at noon! a pageant in the evening. The philosopher proves that the philosopher exists. The poet merely en-oys existence. The poet is the priest of the invisible oetry is a search for the inexplicable oor! dear! silly Spring! preparing her annual surprise. Success as a result of industry is a peasant ideal /eath is the mother of beauty &e live in an old chaos of the sun 0ife*s nonsense pierces us with strange relation 0ife consists of propositions about life All history is modern history The poet is a god! or! the young poet is a god. The old poet is a tramp. The world is a force not a presence The final elief i! "# elie$e in a fi%"i#n& 'hi%h (#) *n#' "# e a fi%"i#n& "he+e ein, n#"hin, el!e- The e./)i!i"e "+)"h i! "# *n#' "ha" i" i! a fi%"i#n an0 "ha" (#) elie$e in i" 'illin,l(1##+& 0ea+& !ill( 23+in,& 3+e3a+in, he+ ann)al !)+3+i!e4

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