Every individual ought to know at least one poet from cover to cover: if not as a guide through the world, then as a yardstick for the language.
Interpretation
We should all familiarize ourselves with poetry to enrich our understanding of the world and language.
Joseph Brodsky emphasizes the importance of poetry in our lives, suggesting that knowing a poet's work intimately can offer guidance in navigating our experiences and help us appreciate the nuances of language. Poetry serves not only as an artistic expression but also as a tool to measure the complexity and beauty of words in our everyday lives.
In practice
In a speech about education, one could say, 'As Joseph Brodsky stated, every individual ought to know at least one poet, emphasizing the role of poetry in our learning journey.'
Basically, it's hard for me to assess myself, a hardship not only prompted by the immodesty of the enterprise, but because one is not capable of assessing himself, let alone his work. However, if I were to summarize, my main interest is the nature of time. That's what interests me most of all. What time can do to a man.
One always pulls the trigger out of self-interest and quotes history to avoid responsibility or pangs of conscience.
On the whole, infinity is a fairly palpable aspect of this business of publishing, if only because it extends a dead author's existence beyond the limits he envisioned, or provides a living author with a future he cannot measure. In other words, this business deals with the future which we all prefer to regard as unending.
The invention of ethical and political doctrines, which blossomed into our own social sciences, is a product of times when things appeared manageable. The same goes for the criticism of those doctrines, though as a voice from the past, this criticism proved prophetic.
Try not to pay attention to those who will try to make life miserable for you. There will be a lot of those - in the official capacity as well as the self-appointed.
To put it in plain language, Russia is that country where the name of a writer appears not on the cover of his book, but on the door of his prison cell.
A book is like a man - clever and dull, brave and cowardly, beautiful and ugly. For every flowering thought there will be a page like a wet and mangy mongrel, and for every looping flight a tap on the wing and a reminder that wax cannot hold the feathers firm too near the sun.
A classic,' suggested Anthony, 'is a successful book that has survived the reaction of the next period or generation. Then it's safe, like a style in architecture or furniture. It's acquired a picturesque dignity to take the place of its fashion.
If I could sum it up in 50 words, I wouldn't have needed to write a whole novel about it.
The problem with fiction, it has to be plausible. That's not true with non-fiction.
All novels are about certain minorities: the individual is a minority. The universal in the novel-and isn't that what we're all clamoring for these days?-is reached only through the depiction of the specific man in a specific circumstance.
For one who reads, there is no limit to the number of lives that may be lived, for fiction, biography, and history offer an inexhaustible number of lives in many parts of the world, in all periods of time.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.