On Poetry

Once a poem's left home it doesn't care about you.

- - -

"Beautiful words ruin your poetry. A touch of beauty enhances a dish, but you throw a hill of it into the pot! No, the palate becomes nauseous. You beleif a poem must be beautiful, or it can have no excellence. Am I right?"

"Sort of"

"Your 'sort of' is annoying. A yes or a not, or a qualification, please. 'Sort of' is an idle loubard, and ignorant vandale. 'Sort of' says 'I am ashamed by clarify and precision.' So we try again. You belief a poem must be beautiful, or it is not a poem. I am right?"

"Yes."

"Yes. Idiots labor in this misconception. Beauty is not excellence. Beauty is distraction, beauty is cosmetics, beauty is ultimately fatigue."

- - -

...the poem is a raid on the inarticulate...Poems who are not written yet, or not written ever, exists here. The realm of the inarticulate. Art fabricated of the inarticulate is beauty. Even if its themes is ugly. Silver moons, thundering seas, cliches of cheese, poison beauty. The amateur thinks his words, his paints, his notes, makes the beauty. But the master knows his words is just the vehicle in who beauty sits. The master knows he does not know what beauty is.


-David Mitchell, Black Swan Green, pg. 146-147.

Darwin was sure that even those spectacles of nature that overwhelm us by their beauty, from the peacock's tail to the fragrance of an English rose, serve not man's purpose but their own, which is survival and reproducibility.  If anything in nature could be found that had been "created for beauty in the eyes of man" rather than the good of its possessor, it would be "absolutely fatal" to his theory.  In other words, maple leaves in autumn do not  suddenly transform into stained glass pendants, illuminated by a setting sun, in order to satisfy a human longing for beauty.  Their scarlet, ochre, and golden colors emerge as chlorophyll production shuts down, in preparation for sacrificing the leaves that are vulnerable to winter cold, and ensuring the survival of the tree.  but he tree survives, while our vision is ravished.  The peacock's display attracts a hen, and it nourishes the human eye.  the flower's fragrance entices a pollinator, but it also intoxicates the gardener.  In the "while," in that "and," in that "but it also," we find the giftedness of life.

Therein lies the most telling sign of a vast superabundance.  Nature's purposes and God's purposes are not in competition but work in tandem.  If the first works by blind necessity, the second works by generosity.  And in recognizing the giftedness, we turn from appreciation to gratitude; from admiration for the world's efficiency and order, to love of its beauty and grandeur.

Terryl & Fiona Givens, The God Who Weeps, pg. 36

There are two occasions when the sacred beauty of Creation becomes dazzlingly apparent, and they occur together. One is when we feel our mortal insufficiency to the world, and the other is when we feel the world's mortal insufficiency to us."

-Marilynne Robinson, Gilead (pg. 245)

Every prayer seemed long to me at that age, and I was truly bone tired. I tried to keep my eyes closed, but after a while i had to look around a little. And this is something I remember very well. At first I thought I saw the sun setting in the east; I knew where east was, because the sun was just over the horizon when we got there that morning. Then I realized that what I saw was a full moon rising just as the sun was going down. Each of them was standing on its edge, with the most wonderful light between them. It seemed as if you could touch it, as if there were palpable currents of light passing back and forth, or as if there were palpable currents of light passing back and forth, or as if there were great taut skeins of light suspended between them. I wanted my father to see it, but I knew I'd have to startle him out of his prayer, and I wanted to do it the best way, so I took his hand and kissed it. And then I said, "look at the moon." and he did. We just stood there until the sun was down and the moon was up. They seemed to float on the horizon for a quite a long time, I suppose because they were both so bright you couldn't get a clear look at them. And that grave, and my father and I, were exactly between them, which seemed amazing to me at the time, since I hadn't given much thought to the nature of the horizon.

My father said, "I would never have thought this place could be beautiful. I'm glad to know that."

-Marilynne Robinson, Gilead (pg. 14-15)