3 Dana Gioia Quotes on Language

Dana Gioia quotes on language

3. The music that of common speech but slanted so that each detail sounds unexpected as a sharp inserted in a simple scale.

5. Yet the stones remain less real to those who cannot name them, or read the mute syllables graven in silica. To see a red stone is less than seeing it as jasper - metamorphic quartz, cousin to the flint the Kiowa carved as arrowheads. To name is to know and remember.

36. Poetry is the art of using words charged with their utmost meaning. A society whose intellectual leaders lose the skill to shape, appreciate, and understand the power of language will become the slaves of those who retain it - be they politicians, preachers, copywriters, or newscasters.