When you think intensely and beautifully, something happens. That something is called poetry. If you think that way and speak at the same time, poetry gets in your mouth. If people hear you, it gets in their ears. If you think that way and write at the same time, then poetry gets written. But poetry exists in any case. The question is only: are you going to take part, and if so, how?
Interpretation
Poetry arises from deep, beautiful thoughts and the way we express them, inviting others to share in that experience.
This quote by Robert Bringhurst highlights the transformative power of thought and expression. It suggests that poetry is not just a literary form but a manifestation of intense and beautiful thinking. When we think deeply and share our thoughts through speech or writing, we create poetry that resonates with others. Bringhurst emphasizes the active participation in this poetic experience, questioning how one engages with the essence of poetry in their own life. Ultimately, poetry is omnipresent; itβs up to each individual to embrace and contribute to it.
In practice
This quote can be used in a poetry workshop to inspire participants to express their genuine thoughts.
Typography is the craft of endowing human language with a durable visual form, and thus with an independent existence. Its heartwood is calligraphy - the dance, on a tiny stage, of the living, speaking hand - and its roots reach into living soil, though its branches may be hung each year with new machines. So long as the root lives, typography remains a source of true delight, true knowledge, true surprise.
If language is lost, humanity is lost. If writing is lost, certain kinds of civilization and society are lost, but many other kinds remain - and there is no reason to think that those alternatives are inferior.
Typography exists to honor content.
In a world rife with unsolicited messages, typography must often draw attention to itself before it will be read. Yet in order to be read, it must relinquish the attention it has drawn. Typography with anything to say therefore aspires to a kind of statuesque transparency. It's other traditional goal is durability: not immunity to change, but a clear superiority to fashion. Typography at its best is a visual form of language linking timelessness and time.
Poetry, I'm often told, is something made of words. I think it really goes the other way around: words are made of poetry.
Some writers enjoy writing, I am told. Not me. I enjoy having written.
I teach my sighs to lengthen into songs.
Well, you know, with every character, if you're going to expose yourself, you've got to figure out every detail that you're going to play. So there's no character that you can just go put on his shirt and be fully prepared.
I have a feeling, one of those gut feelings, that I'll make pretty good movies the rest of my life.
It's rare in Hollywood to get the chance to work on something that you actually care about. The tragedy of the place is all these talented people trying to get excited about stuff they themselves would only view at gunpoint.
Nothing great or enduring, especially in music, has ever sprung full-fledged and unprecedented from the brain of any master; the best he gives to the world he gathers from the hearts of the people, and runs it through the alembic of his genius.
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