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Saturday, November 05, 2011

A difficult position

“I can’t quite accept what seems to be a fairly conventional notion of poetry as that which bolsters us up in what we already know. I am less interested in that than in poetry that puts us in a difficult position and makes us think about how things are.”

—Paul Muldoon, quoted in a review of Maggot by Nick Laird, in The New York Review of Books, 23 June, 2011.

1 comment:

Nathan said...

Well said. As another author once said, literature has the same aim as science, to find and tell the truth. One batters mercilessly (often helplessly) at the gates of our prejudiced intellects, but the other slips in through the unguarded side door of our hearts.

Appreciated the presentation at the University tonight -- the message of dialoging (not preaching) through art was quite helpful.