The only thing that can save the world is the reclaiming of the awareness of the world. That's what poetry does. By poetry I mean the imagining of what has been lost and what can be found - the imagining of who we are and the slow realization of it.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes that poetry helps us regain awareness of our world and our identity.
Allen Ginsberg suggests that the world can only be saved by restoring our awareness of its beauty and truths through the medium of poetry. By 'poetry', he refers not only to written words but to the imaginative act of reflecting on our past losses and potential recoveries, ultimately leading to a deeper understanding of ourselves and our place in the world.
In practice
During a literary festival, one could quote this to highlight the importance of poetry in understanding human experiences.
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of the night.
Marijuana is a useful catalyst for specific optical and aural aesthetic perceptions. I apprehended the structure of certain pieces of jazz and classical music in a new manner under the influence of marijuana, and these apprehensions have remained valid in years of normal consciousness.
Many seek and never see, anyone can tell them why. O they weep and O they cry and never take until they try unless they try it in their sleep and never some until they die. I ask many, they ask me. This is a great mystery.
What if someone gave a war and Nobody came?
Fortunately art is a community effort - a small but select community living in a spiritualized world endeavoring to interpret the wars and the solitudes of the flesh.
Sometime I’ll lay down my wrath, As I lay my body down Between the ache of breath and breath, Golden slumber in the bone.
Writers really live in the mind and in hotels of the soul.
I try to help people realize their dreams by using magic to tell stories that educate, move, and inspire.
Blogging is to writing what extreme sports are to athletics: more free-form, more accident-prone, less formal, more alive. It is, in many ways, writing out loud.
I'm not a journalist; I'm a poet.
Making lyrics feel natural, sit on music in such a way that you don't feel the effort of the author, so that they shine and bubble and rise and fall, is very, very hard to do. Whereas you can sit at the piano and just play and feel you're making art.
I come from the place where I am thinking 'I have put my blood on the pages.'
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