Monday Morning Quotes

Monday Morning Quotes
www.mondaymorningquote.com ~ www.mondaymorningquotes.com
MMQs on facebook /// @MonMornQuote on twitter
Since 1998 I've been sending out these reflections first thing each week--one or more quotes plus my thoughts about the intersections and contradictions. They're archived here back to 2002, and a new one is posted every Monday morning. Dialogue is still welcome . . .

Latest Quote & Archive / Search Quotes / RSS / Add to Google
Want the weekly quote in your email?
Enter Email:

View Quotes


Pick A Quote:

Quote #1083 - #PoeticDevising

22 May, 2023

POETIC DEVISING


"We should conceive of poetry as capable of higher uses, and called to higher destinies, than those which in general men have assigned to it hitherto."
Matthew Arnold

"If God can disappear, that means he was always just a creation of human imagination; and if we could imagine God, why shouldn't we be able to imagine his replacement?"
"Literature and religion and politics ... they are all ways of trying to understand what this world really is and how we are supposed to live in it."
Adam Kirsch

"Put your ear down close to your soul and listen hard."
Anne Sexton


These quotes touched me so deeply when I read them,
spoke to me
not just of my actual poems
not just of my songs
but of these pieces I write
each Monday,
have written now
for over twenty years.

Somewhere along the line
most became
poetic form.

And yet ...
I have been reluctant to call these pieces
poetry.
I write them so quickly,
revise just once before sending out, and
I frame them in short lines for you
to make quick sense of them
not to artfully
alter context and meaning
(well yes maybe sometimes,
but
not just
to artfully alter context and meaning).

Here in this moment--
reading these words--
I wonder if I am trying to make
non-religious sense of the world
through poetic form
through story
through metaphor
through imagery
as more than fact
more than belief
some kind of new
poetic devising.

There is more to come on this.
Thoughts are welcome.
I am just beginning the thought line ...
the devising ...
the poetic exploration ...

Shellen Lubin
May 22, 2023


Join Our Mailing List
Email: