Quote #209

Poetry is a purging of the world's poverty and change and evil and death. It is a present perfecting, a satisfaction in the irremediable poverty of life.

More from Wallace Stevens

  1. All history is modern history.
  2. The imagination is one of the forces of nature.
  3. A poet looks at the world as a man looks at a woman.
  4. To have nothing to say and to say it in a tragic manner is not the same thing as having something to say.
  5. A poem should be a part of one's sense of life.
  6. Man is an eternal sophomore.
  7. Sentimentality is a failure of feeling.
  8. The poet is a god, or, the young poet is a god. The old poet is a tramp.

All Wallace Stevens quotes