"A poet is somebody who feels, and who expresses his feelings through words.
This may sound easy. It isnβt."
"A lot of people think or believe or know they feel β but thatβs thinking or believing or knowing; not feeling. And poetry is feeling β not knowing or believing or thinking."
"Almost anybody can learn to think or believe or know, but not a single human being can be taught to feel. Why? Because whenever you think or you believe or you know, youβre a lot of other people: but the moment you feel, youβre nobody-but-yourself." ~Laura Riding
Love is a place
love is a place
& through this place of
love move
(with brightness of peace)
all places
yes is a world
& in this world of
yes live
(skillfully curled)
all worlds.
His poems were his way
of saying YES.
YES to the heart
and the roundness of the moon,
to birds, elephants, trees,
and everything he loved.
YES to spring, too
which always brought him back
to childhood, when the first
sign of his favorite season
was the whistling arrival
of the balloon man.
Cummings considers what ordains that hypothetical peasantβs painting capital-A Art:
"It is Art because it is alive. It proves that, if you and I are to create at all, we must create with today and let all the Art schools and Medicis in the universe go hang themselves with yesterdayβs rope. It teaches us that we have made a profound error in trying to learn Art, since…"
βWhatever Art stands for is whatever cannot be learned. Indeed, the Artist is no other than he who unlearns what he has learned, in order to know himself; and the agony of the Artist, far from being the result of the worldβs failure to discover and appreciate him, arises from his own personal struggle to discover, to appreciate and finally to express himself.β
Dedicated to Erie Chapman in honor of you on this your birthday week!
Shared by Liz Sorensen Wessel
Photo Collage by ~liz

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