Poetry Is The Art Of Understanding What

. . . What Humanity Most Desperately Needs Is Not The Creation Of New Worlds But The Recreation In Terms Of Human Comprehension Of The World We Have -- And It Is For This Reason That Arts Go On For Generation To Generation In Spite Of The Fact That Phidias Has Already Carved And Homer Has Already Sung. The Creation, We Are Informed, Was Accomplished In Seven Days With Sunday Off, But The Recreation Will Never Be Accomplished Because It Is Always Accomplished Anew For Each Generation Of Living Men.

If You Commit Yourself To The Art Of Poetry, You Commit Yourself To The Task Of Learning How To See, Using Words As Elements Of Sight And Their Sounds As Prisms. And To See Means To See Something Worth All The Agony Of Learning How To See.

Journalism Is Concerned With Events, Poetry With Feelings. Journalism Is Concerned With The Look Of The World, Poetry With The Feel Of The World.

Wildness And Silence Disappeared From The Countryside, Sweetness Fell From The Air, Not Because Anyone Wished Them To Vanish Or Fall But Because Throughways Had To Floor The Meadows With Cement To Carry The Automobiles Which Advancing Technology Produced. Tropical Beaches Turned Into High-priced Slums Where Thousand-room Hotels Elbowed Each Other For Glimpses Of Once-famous Surf Not Because Those Who Loved The Beaches Wanted Them There But Because Enormous Jets Could Bring A Million Tourists Every Year - And Therefore Did.

If The Art Of Poetry Is?the Art Of Making Sense Of The Chaos Of Human Experience, It's Not A Bad Thing To See A Lot Of Chaos.