In the works of the better poets you get the sensation that they're not talking to people any more, or to some seraphical creature. What they're doing is simply talking back to the language itself --as beauty, sensuality, wisdom, irony --those aspects of language of which the poet is a clear mirror. Poetry is not an art or a branch of art, it's something more. If what distinguishes us from other species is speech, then poetry, which is the supreme linguistic operation, is our anthropological, indeed genetic, goal. Anyone who regards poetry as an entertainment, as a ''read,'' commits an anthropological crime, in the first place, against himself.
More Quotes from Joseph Brodsky:
Twentieth-century Russian literature has produced nothing special except perhaps one novel and two stories by Andrei Platonov, who ended his days sweeping streets.Joseph Brodsky
Bad literature is a form of treason.
Joseph Brodsky
Poetry is rather an approach to things, to life, than it is typographical production.
Joseph Brodsky
Life is a game with many rules but no referee. One learns how to play it more by watching it than by consulting any book, including the holy book. Small wonder, then, that so many play dirty, that so few win, that so many lose.
Joseph Brodsky
This is the generation whose first cry of life was the Hungarian uprising.
Joseph Brodsky
Cherish your human connections: your relationships with friends and family.
Joseph Brodsky
Readers Who Like This Quotation Also Like:
Based on Topics: Art Quotes, Beauty Quotes, Crime Quotes, Goals Quotes, Language Quotes, Literature Quotes, Place Quotes, Poetry Quotes, Poets Quotes, Speech Quotes, Wisdom & Knowledge Quotes, Work & Career QuotesBased on Keywords: anthropological
Nor ought a genius less than his that writ attempt translation.
John Denham
When you belong to a minority, you have to be better in order to have the right to be equal.
Christiane Collage
I can easily conceive, most Holy Father, that as soon as some people learn that in this book which I have written concerning the revolutions of the heavenly bodies, I ascribe certain motions to the Earth, they will cry out at once that I and my theory should be rejected.
Nicolaus Copernicus