The merit of poetry, in its wildest forms, still consists in its truth-truth conveyed to the understanding, not directly by the words, but circuitously by means of imaginative associations, which serve as its conductors.
The difference between a top-flight creative man and the hack is his ability to express powerful meanings indirectly.
To be thoroughly modern, an aphorism should trail off vaguely rather than coming to a point.
Some people connect with a story and may find between the lines something that might be useful to him or her, but that's not the intention of the author, I think. At least not mine.
Well, the great thing for me about poetry is that in good poems the dislocation of words, that is to say, the distance between what they say they're saying and what they are actually saying is at its greatest.
nothing she did or said was quite what she meant but still her life could be called a monument shaped in a slant of available light and set to the movement of possible music
Poets in our civilization, as it exists at present, must be difficult...The poet must become more and more comprehensive, more allusive, more indirect, in order to force, to dislocate if necessary, language into its meaning.
