What Sparks Poetry:
Toby Altman on Other Arts
"Being with these buildings, studying them, touching the rough grains of the concrete—it changes something. I learned a new way of seeing. Surfaces stopped receding. I saw the textures, the way that buildings were made. I started looking at architecture, rather than through it. This is one thing poetry can do for you: it can teach you to look at the world again." |
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"Christian Wiman: The poet on the need for awe"
"The relation between poetry and awe is intimate and absolute. Any poet who loses that capacity for wonder—the Biblical sort, which includes fear—is done. One of the most important theologians in my life is Abraham Joshua Heschel, whose whole theology is built around awe or wonder. ('Wonder rather than doubt is the root of all knowledge.') It's not a bouncy castle kind of wonder, though. In one of his poems, Heschel hints at the cost: 'I prayed for wonders instead of happiness, Lord / And you gave them to me.'"
via THE YALE REVIEW |
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