I think it was Milosz, the Polish poet, who when he lay in a doorway and watched the bullets lifting the cobbles out of the street beside him realised that most poetry is not equipped for life in a world where people actually die. But some is.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that true poetry must address the harsh realities of life, including death and violence.
Ted Hughes reflects on the idea that much of poetry fails to capture the raw and often brutal experiences of life, particularly those involving death and destruction. He references the Polish poet Milosz, who, during a moment of danger, understood that the essence of poetry should encompass the stark realities of existence, including the inevitability of death. This underscores the notion that art should confront trauma and truth rather than remain sheltered from it.
In practice
During a poetry reading to emphasize the importance of confronting life's realities.
...imagine what you are writing about. See it and live it. Do not think it up laboriously, as if you were working out mental arithmetic. Just look at it, touch it, smell it, listen to it, turn yourself into it. When you do this, the words look after themselves, like magic.
The inmost spirit of poetry, in other words, is at bottom, in every recorded case, the voice of pain – and the physical body, so to speak, of poetry, is the treatment by which the poet tries to reconcile that pain with the world.
Nobody wanted your dance, Nobody wanted your strange glitter, your floundering Drowning life and your effort to save yourself, Treading water, dancing the dark turmoil, Looking for something to give.
Haven’t you heard of the music of the spheres?” asked the dragon. “It’s the music that space makes to itself. All the spirits inside all the stars are singing. I’m a star spirit. I sing too. The music of the spheres is what makes space so peaceful.
You solve it as you get older, when you reach the point where you've tasted so much that you can somehow sacrifice certain things more easily, and you have a more tolerant view of things like possessiveness (your own) and a broader acceptance of the pains and the losses.
And the elephant sings deep in the forest-maze_x000D_ _x000D_ About a star of deathless and painless peace_x000D_ _x000D_ But no astronomer can find where it is.
Every rose that is sweet-scented within, That rose is telling of the secrets of the Universal.
In my opinion, the most fruitful and natural play of the mind is conversation. I find it sweeter than any other action in life; and if I were forced to choose, I think I would rather lose my sight than my hearing and voice. The study of books is a drowsy and feeble exercise which does not warm you up.
Well,’ I said, ‘Paris is old, is many centuries. You feel, in Paris, all the time gone by. That isn’t what you feel in New York — ’He was smiling. I stopped. ‘What do you feel in New York?’ he asked. ‘Perhaps you feel,’ I told him, ‘all the time to come. There’s such power there, everything is in such movement. You can’t help wondering—I can’t help wondering—what it will all be like— many years from now.
All in all, punishment hardens and renders people more insensible; it concentrates; it increases the feeling of estrangement; it strengthens the power of resistance.
A man screaming is not a dancing bear. Life is not a spectacle.
To measure the man, measure his heart.
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