Friday Quote(s): On Poetry

Glass

Words of a poem should be glass
But glass so simple-suble its shape
Is nothing but the shape of what it holds.

A glass spun for itself is empty...

Words should be looked through, should be windows.
The best word were invisible.
...

--Robert Francis
excerpts from his poem, "Glass"

And

Poetry could be acted as well as composed.

--G.K. Chesterton
from Orthodoxy

It occurs to me that if we live life well it becomes a well-written poem: meaning is visible within it. The details of an individual life--the myrid of ways in which that life is expressed--should serve to make the meaning held within it clearly evident to observers.

This is what I mean when I say that the desire grows within me to not so much write poetry as to be the poem.