"The poet creates it; the people by recitation recreate it. Poet and reader are moments of the same reality."

Edward Hirsch Literature See all quotes by Edward Hirsch →

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“Inspiration is inbreathing, indwelling, poetry can never be entirely willed. It may be true a poet is given only a single line but that line is a gift from the unconscious, intution , a perception.”

“Poetry is a form of necessary speech.”

“The poem is an original and unique creation, but it is reading and recitation: participation.”

“Examples of Hirsch poems”

“Extract links Hirsch's 'Poets Glossary'”

“For most of history poetry has been an oral art, it retains the vestiges of orality, an experience embedded in the sensuality of sounds.”

Resonant Thoughts

"Experience to be experience must be reality; truth to be true must be true of reality. Experience, truth and reality are inseparable."

— Michael Oakeshott

Philosophy1901–1990

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"Now, leaving aside all the physical factors one can quote — leaving aside the rape or murder, leaving aside the bloody catalogue of oppression which we are too familiar with any way — what the system …"

— James Baldwin

Social Activism1924–1987

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"I believe in the honest craft of workmen. Take a look around you. There never were enough bosses to check up on all that work. From Independence Hall to the Grand Coulee Dam, these things were built l…"

— Robert A. Heinlein

Literature1907–1988

#truth