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"But at the beginning it was clear to me that concrete poetry was peculiarly suited for using in public settings. This was my idea, but of course I never really much got the chance to do it."
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"One can't write for all readers. A poet cannot write for people who don't like poetry."
"A tough life needs a tough language-and that is what poetry is. That is what literature offers-a language powerful enough to say how it is."
"I suppose that's how it looks in prose. But it's very different if you look at it through poetry and I think it's nicer' Anne recovered herself and her eyes shone and her cheeks flushed 'to look at it through poetry."
"Poetry is a sword of lightning, ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it."
"A poet is not an inventor. A poet is a player that plays with words on the field of human imagination to excite a reader's mind with the colors of emotion."
"The sources of poetry are in the spirit seeking completeness."
"Poetry is rather an approach to things, to life, than it is typographical production."
"My soul is wrapped in harsh repose,Midnight descends in raven-colored clothes,But soft... behold!A sunlight beamButting a swath of glimmering gleam.My heart expands,'tis grown a bulge in it,Inspired by your beauty...Effulgent."
Explore more quotes by Ian Hamilton Finlay
"My position is that since the non-secular status of my garden is not recognised by the law; by the world of the public, then the garden can only be private. So, I closed the garden to the public."
"Little Sparta is a garden in the traditional sense. It is perhaps not like other modern gardens, but I think that other times would have had no difficulty with it."
"What you compose with is neither here nor there, you compose with words, or you compose with stone plants and trees, or you compose with events; the Sheriff's officer, or whatever."
"The same sort of thing happened in my dispute with the National Trust book: Follies: A National Trust Guide, which implied that the only pleasure you can get from Folly architecture is by calling the architect mad, and by laughing at the architecture."
"I have often said that just as the French revolution, for instance, understood itself through antiquity, I think our time can be understood through the French revolution. It is quite a natural process to use other times to understand your own time."
"If the work is pure then you have to think it could be understood. If it is not understood it doesn't mean that your work is not accessible. It doesn't worry me, but, of course, I would be pleased if people liked my work."
"No, I don't make my work in order to challenge or confuse other people's expectations - I only do what I find natural."
"For me concrete poetry was a particular way of using language which came out of a particular feeling, and I don't have control over whether this feeling is in me or not."
"But I can only write what the muse allows me to write. I cannot choose, I can only do what I am given, and I feel pleased when I feel close to concrete poetry - still."
"But you have to understand that I consider myself a very modest artist, or whatever, and not of importance really at all - it is quite embarrassing to me to be asked my opinion about things. I am only a wee Scottish poet on the outside of everything."
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