For what is a poem but a hazardous attempt at self-understanding: it is the deepest part of autobiography.
Interpretation
A poem serves as a personal exploration of one's self, revealing deep truths about the individual through creative expression.
In this quote, Robert Penn Warren suggests that poetry is more than just a form of art; it is a brave effort to understand oneself. By crafting a poem, the poet engages in a risky journey of introspection, sharing their innermost thoughts and feelings, and essentially documenting their personal narrative in an artistic way.
In practice
During a poetry reading, one might use this quote to introduce their own work, emphasizing personal reflection.
...the air so still it aches like the place where the tooth was on the morning after youβve been to the dentist or aches like your heart in the bosom when you stand on the street corner waiting for the light to change and happen to recollect how things once were and how they might have been yet if what happened had not happened.
The poem is a little myth of man's capacity of making life meaningful.
And what we students of history always learn is that the human being is a very complicated contraption and that they are not good or bad but are good and bad and the good comes out of the bad and the bad out of the good, and the devil take the hindmost.
Yet the definition we have made of ourselves is ourselves. To break out of it, we must make a new self. But how can the self make a new self when the selflessness which it is, is the only substance from which the new self can be made?
So little time we live in Time,_x000D_ _x000D_ And we learn all so painfully,_x000D_ _x000D_ That we may spare this hour's term_x000D_ _x000D_ To practice for Eternity.
Storytelling and copulation are the two chief forms of amusement in the South. They're inexpensive and easy to procure.
Writing has always been a serious business for me. I felt it was a moral obligation. A major concern of the time was the absence of the African voice. Being part of that dialogue meant not only sitting at the table but effectively telling the African story from an African perspective - in full earshot of the world.
I had to say to myself, 'I haven't written enough about blackness, yet it's part of my consciousness and my lived experience.' I had to get over that anxiety of 'I haven't done this before.'
Maybe the theatre isn't any place for a reasonable human being after all. It keeps your emotions in such a constant state of upheaval. It's really terribly wearing. I wonder if I could stand it, one emotional upset after the other just going on and on for the rest of my life.
As a writer you're holding a dog. You let the dog run about. But you finally can pull him back. Finally, I'm in control. But the great excitement is to see what happens if you let the whole thing go. And the dog or the character really runs about, bites everyone in sight, jumps up trees, falls into lakes, gets wet, and you let that happen. That's the excitement of writing plays-to allow the thing to be free but still hold the final leash.
To say the word Romanticism is to say modern art - that is, intimacy, spirituality, color, aspiration towards the infinite, expressed by every means available to the arts.
When I look back and think how fortunate I've been to work with some wonderful people and had some marvelous experiences, then I can look at 'Star Trek' and think it's almost like the cream on the coffee. I don't approach it as anything but a magnificent plus.
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