from the learning notebooks

i’ve gathered around me, rather by accident, a tall stack of books about poetry.  here’s a bit from my notebooks:

although the wind

blows terribly here,

the moonlight also leaks

between the roof planks

of this ruined house.

:: Shikibu

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the mind of poetry makes visible how permeable we are to the winds and moonlight with which we share our house.

:: Jane Hirshfield

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the objective correlative of subjective experience

:: T.S. Eliot

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the natural object is always the adequate symbol.

:: Donald Hall

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one of the functions of poetry is to keep the memory of people and places and things and happenings alive.

:: Jane Kenyon

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the prophetic function of the poem, waiting on the page for the breath the will come and make it alive, make it new

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lyric poetry…the personal lyric…incantatory blessings

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i think culture invented lyric poetry along with religion and philosophy to help people understand the world and to discover ordering powers.

:: Gregory Orr

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an abiding dearest freshness deep down of things

:: Gerard Manley Hopkins

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my ear is not working, my poetry ear.  i can’t write a line that doesn’t sound like pots and pans falling out of the cupboard.

:: Jane Kenyon

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