A man is either free or he is not. There cannot be any apprenticeship for freedom.
Amiri BarakaRead
Poetry is music, and nothing but music. Words with musical emphasis.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Poetry is fundamentally a musical form of expression using words.
Amiri Baraka suggests that poetry should be understood as a form of music, emphasizing the rhythm and sound of words rather than merely their meaning. This perspective encourages readers to appreciate the aesthetic qualities of language and how these qualities evoke emotions similar to musical compositions.
Themes
PoetryMusicWordsExpressionArt
In practice
Example use cases
In a poetry reading, when discussing the role of sound in verse.
More from Amiri Baraka
All quotes βwhat is lost because it is most precious what is most precious because it is lost
Amiri BarakaRead
I am inside someone who hates me. I look out from his eyes.
Amiri BarakaRead
And now each night, I count the stars. And each night I get the same number. And when the stars won't come to be counted, I count the holes they leave.
Amiri BarakaRead
The attempt to divide art and politics is a bourgeois which says good poetry, art, cannot be political, but since everything is β¦ political, even an artist or work that claims not to have any politics is making a political statement by that act.
Amiri BarakaRead
I am inside someone_x000D_ who hates me. I look_x000D_ out from his eyes. Smell_x000D_ what fouled tunes come in_x000D_ to his breath. Love his_x000D_ wretched women.
Amiri BarakaRead
Similar quotes
A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it.
Mark TwainRead
I am apparently gentle, unstable, and full of pretenses. I will die a poet killed by the nonpoets, will renounce no dream, resign myself to no ugliness, accept nothing of the world but the one I made myself. I wrote, lived, loved like Don Quixote, and on the day of my death I will say: βExcuse me, it was all a dream,β and by that time I may have found one who will say: βNot at all, it was true, absolutely true.β
Anais NinRead
What I am trying to do when I use symbols is to awaken in your unconscious some reaction. I am very conscious of what I am using because symbols can be very dangerous. When we use normal language we can defend ourselves because our society is a linguistic society, a semantic society. But when you start to speak, not with words, but only with images, the people cannot defend themselves.
Alejandro JodorowskyRead
The important thing is not to be too comfortable when you're writing. Noise in the street? That's good. The computer goes down? That's good. All these things are good. It has to be a little bit of a struggle.
E. L. DoctorowRead
Because I cannot work except in solitude, it is necessary that I live my work and that is impossible except in solitude.
Pablo PicassoRead
In performance capture roles, it's not a committee of animators that author the role, it's the actor. I think that's a significant thing for people to understand.
Andy SerkisRead