Poetry is that / which arrives at the intellect / by way of the heart.
Interpretation
Poetry connects with our intellect through emotional experience.
This quote by R. S. Thomas emphasizes the dual nature of poetry, suggesting that its impact goes beyond mere intellectual interpretation and resonates deeply with our emotional core. By stating that poetry reaches the intellect through the heart, it highlights the importance of feelings and experiences in understanding and appreciating poetic art.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about the role of emotions in literature.
The furies are at home in the mirror; it is their address. Even the clearest water, if deep enough can drown. Never think to surprise them. Your face approaching ever so friendly is the white flag they ignore. There is no truce with the furies. A mirror's temperature is always zero. It is ice in the veins. It's camera is an x-ray. It is a chalice held out to you in silent communion, where gaspingly you partake of a shifting identity never your own.
Imaginative truth is the most immediate way of presenting ultimate reality to a human being... ultimate reality is what we call God.
A recurring ideal, I find, is that of simplicity. At times there comes the desire to write with great precision and clarity, words so simple and moving that they bring tears to the eyes.
Man is a dream about a shadow. But when some splendour falls upon him from God, a glory comes to him and his life is sweet.
Certain things leave you in your life and certain things stay with you. And that's why we're all interested in movies- those ones that make you feel, you still think about. Because it gave you such an emotional response, it's actually part of your emotional make-up, in a way.
One begins by plaguing oneself to no purpose in order to be true to nature, and one concludes by working quietly from one's own palette alone, and then nature is the result.
It is shameful that dancing should renounce the empire it might assert over the mind and only endeavor to please the sight.
Or art thou but / A dagger of the mind, a false creation, / Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?
Fiction is the truth inside the lie.
The purpose of theatre is... making an event in which a group of fragments are sudde nly brought together... in a community which, by the natural laws that make every community, gradually breaks up... At certain moments this fragmented world comes together and for a certain time it can rediscover the marvel of organic life ... The marvel of being one.
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