being shines through

The pleasures of philosophy are the pleasures of reduction—the epiphanies of hinting in a few words at complex matters. Both poetry and philosophy, for instance, are concerned with Being. What is a lyric poem, one might say, but the recreation of the experience of Being. In both cases, that need to get it down to its essentials, to say the unsayable and let the truth of Being shine through.

—Charles Simic, “Reading Philosophy at Night,” The Life of Images: Selected Prose (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2015)

not poet

Every poet must, I think, feel a bit uneasy when receiving honours, because he knows that like the label poet itself—even more so—they have nothing to do with being a poet and writing poetry. A poet is only a poet when he is writing poetry, and when his is writing poetry least of all does he know that he is a poet. In fact, usually the attempt to write poetry makes him painfully aware that he isn’t.

—Stephen Spender, Chaos and Control in Poetry (The Library of Congress, pamphlet, 1966)

mentally prepared

It is fine to be mentally prepared at every moment that every object and every being shall bring to you some new revelation.

—Rudolf Steiner