It's not that he lacked poetry. But his poetry was of the body, not the mind. He spoke it in the way he moved, the way he held a hammer, rowed a boat, built a fire. I, on the other hand, was like a brain in a box, a beating heart in a coal scuttle.
Interpretation
The quote contrasts two forms of expression: physical and intellectual.
Meg Rosoff reflects on the difference between two types of creativity—one that is expressed through physical actions and manual skills, as opposed to a more cerebral or abstract form of creativity. The imagery illustrates how one's artistry is shaped by their mode of interaction with the world, suggesting that true poetry can be found in actions as much as in thoughts.
In practice
During a workshop on art and movement, this quote can be used to emphasize the importance of physicality in artistic expression.
Your writing voice is the deepest possible reflection of who you are. The job of your voice is not to seduce or flatter or make well-shaped sentences. In your voice, your readers should be able to hear the contents of your mind, your heart, your soul.
Music is a beautiful opiate, if you don't take it too seriously.
I doubt that I could create a character I loathed simply because when a character takes life, it is impossible not to be a little amazed by the phenomenon, and to find that the amazement has something of the quality of delight.
First, I try to take everything away that doesn't matter to singing. It sounds simplistic, but it works. There is absolute focus on singing: producing sounds and emotions that I have always enjoyed. This is key.
My eyes are vague blue, like the sky, and change all the time; they are indiscriminate but fleeting, entirely specific and disloyal, so that no one trusts me. I am always looking away. Or again at something after it has given me up.
[on BBC's Sherlock] It's a rare challenge, both for the audience and an actor, to take part in something with this level of intelligence and wit. You have to really enjoy it. It's a form of mental and physical gymnastics.
I think the blues is the best literature that we as blacks have created since we've been here. I call it our 'sacred book.' What I've attempted to do is to mine that field, to mine those cultural ideas and attitudes and give them to my characters.
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