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"I consider a poem to be a kind of experiment where a number of elements are brought together under test conditions to see how they will interact to create meaning or relevance."
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Exlpore more Meaning quotes
"Find what is meaningful to you and stand by it. Even if you begin to wonder if there is any meaning to anything, continue to be yourself."
"Living deeply requires more than a static vivisection of a person's history and a cold survey of the world. Living a meaningful life entails immersion in the continuous flow of life through passionate thinking, observation, and directed action."
"The thing that matters most is what matters to you, not anybody else."
"Those that can be troubled to muse upon the meaning of life are general disappointed when they figure it out."
"Meaninglessness inhibits fullness of life and is therefore equivalent to illness. Meaning makes a great many things endurable--perhaps everything.... It is not that 'God' is a myth, but that myth is the revelation of a divine life in man. It is not we who invent myth; rather, it speaks to us as a Word of God."
"The word dyting is not synonymous with the word useless."
"The thing about 'colour' is that it's not all about the money or the prestige, but it's about showing what life is all about. Without it..."
"But does it make any sense at all to know that it ends badly for all of us, even the happiest of us, and that we all lose everything that matters in the end-and yet to know as well, despite all this, as cruelly as the game is stacked, that it's possible to play it with a kind of joy?To try to make some meaning out of all this seems unbelievably quaint. Maybe I only see a pattern because I've been staring too long. But then again, to paraphrase Boris, maybe I see a pattern because it's there."
Explore more quotes by John Barton
"My obsession with time informs my poetry so completely it is hard for me to summarize it. We want time to pass, for new things to happen to us, we want to hold on to certain moments, we don't want our lives to end."
"I became intrigued with colour theory. The absurd pronouncements of the Colour Institute, a group that decides what colours are hot each year or season, amused me."
"Poets have to be sensitive to their audience, but it does not mean that they censor themselves. I realise my audience is diverse. Some will read with empathy and curiosity while others will take offense."
"A literary journal is intended to connect writer with reader; the role of the editor is to mediate."
"I have been told by a member of the board of one of Canada's most prominent literary magazines that a submission of mine once caused a great deal of controversy."
"The experiment of the poem is mostly intuitive. I write the first draft, pulling in the various elements that interest me, in the hope that their being combined will lead to some kind of insight."
"Most victims of my autobiographical verse are either far too polite, remarkably understanding unaware that I have written poems about them."
"The community of poets I belong to is not as close as it used to be, if only for the fact that our lives have become busier: jobs, children, and the like."
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