An AI may never be able to write a great poem — a truly original poem — because a poem is made not of language but of experience, and the defining aspect of human experience is the constant collision between our wishes and reality, the sharp violation of our expectations, the demolition of our plans. We call this suffering. Suffering is the price we pay for a consciousness capable of love and the loss of love, of hope and the devastation of hope.
A breath can uncoil as you walk across your own muddy yard, the big dipper pouring night down over you, and everything you dread, all you can't bear, dissolves and, like a needle slipped into your vein — that sudden rush of the world.
3w ago
The flower that you hold in your hands was born today and already it is as old as you are.
It is terrible to survive as consciousness buried in the dark earth. Then it was over: that which you fear, being a soul and unable to speak, ending abruptly, the stiff earth bending a little.
2mo ago
The brain is wider than the sky, for, put them side by side, the one the other will contain with ease, and you beside.
2mo ago
We read the world wrong and say that it deceives us. The poet who walks by moonlight knows that the moon is the sun and that the darkness is a brilliant day.
2mo ago
We read fine things but never feel them to the full until we have gone the same steps as the author.
3mo ago
The task of the excellent poet is not to say the things that can be said about nature, but to say the things that cannot be said about it.
3mo ago
I conceive a man's body as a sort of fiery mist enmeshed in the cage of the skeleton, and mostly resulting from the circulation of the blood.
But hang on here while we make the turn into the final six where all will be resolved, where longing and heartache will find an end, where Laura will tell Petrarch to put down his pen, take off those crazy medieval tights, blow out the lights, and come at last to bed.
6mo ago
Underscored — save the words that stop you in your tracks.
