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About this quote

What does it mean?
Poetry arises from strong emotions that are felt intensely but recalled and processed when the mind is calm.
In plain terms
Good poems come from strong feelings remembered when you are calm.
What can you take from it?
Reflect on emotions in calm moments to create art.

Where it applies

  • writing
  • therapy
  • journaling

Putting it to work

  • meditation
  • writing after feelings subside
  • reviewing experiences

Questions to consider

  • How do you process feelings?
  • When do you create best?

Another view

Some art is created in the heat of the moment without reflection.

More from William Wordsworth

  1. What is a Poet?...He is a man speaking to men: a man, it is true, endowed with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowl…

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  2. All men feel something of an honorable bigotry for the objects which have long continued to please them.

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  3. A multitude of causes unknown to former times are now acting with a combined force to blunt the discriminating powers of the mind, and unfitting it for all vol…

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