A mess of thoughts

I'm not doing so well at writing consistently, but it's a lot to take in all at once when I'm reading. So I'm going to try to get down some stuff. I guess my notebook is going to have to make up what I don't have here.

Horace: I like the way he treats poetry as paintings. One of my favorite poets has long been E.E. Cummings, and I always liked how he talked about his poems as "poempictures." For me, that's what good poetry is. Some poetry, like paintings, are better viewed up close, some from far away, some in the shadows and some in the light.

I also love this quote: "It is not enough for poems to be beautiful; they must be affecting, and must lead the heart of the hearer as they will. [...] If you wish me to weep, you must first feel grief yourself." It really makes intimate the role of poet to his poetry. It's an outpouring of an emotion from the poet that he or she has first felt and internalized and converted to poetic verse. I don't know if that's exactly what he's saying, but that's how I see it.