Bai Juyi Quotes

Walter Scott has no business to write novels, especially good ones. It is not fair. He has fame and profit enough as a poet, and should not be taking the bread out of other people's mouths. I do not like him, and do not mean to like Waverley if I can help it, but fear I must.

The Rose that Grew from Concrete (2000)

I will probably die singing.

The Mississippi and its paddle boats, and the rivers of Bengal and their gleaming steamers evoked a similar atmosphere of romance, of long, song-filled voyages, high winds and lonely sunsets.

Splendid Things
Chinese brocade. A sword with a decorated scabbard. The grain of the wood in a Buddhist statue. Long flowering branches of beautifully coloured wistaria entwined about a pine tree. (p. 109)

Li Yi-an was the greatest poetess of China. Once her husband asked one of his friends to pick out the best lines that he liked from a number of his poems, having, however, concealed in them some pieces by his wife. The friend picked out, to his dismay, only lines from her pen.

Sarojini Naidu writes instant poetry where images and metaphors come rolling ready on the hot plates of imagination. Her poetry is intensely emotionally, at times passionate to the point of eroticism and always has a spring.

One should write not unskilfully in the running hand, be able to sing in a pleasing voice and keep good time to music; and, lastly, a man should not refuse a little wine when pressed upon him.

E-literature is certainly a broader concept than e-poetry, but it can also be limiting: like Verlaine in a famous line from his Art Poétique, one might conclude: et tout le reste est e-littérature, to emphasize the imponderable specificity of poetry.

Ishikawa was a poet of great ability who wanted to develop critical 'realism', but dealt too 'emotively' with human suffering and was isolated from the mainstream of socialist activity. He was passionately in sympathy with the latter, but is marked down as a 'romantic'.

When I speak of language, I do not only mean poetic or verbal language: I am thinking of the language of mathematics, of physics, et cetera. It is a fascinating topic. Language is an interface between us and the world. Beyond language there is nothing but pure mystical contemplation of the universe.

To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful, ready always to apprehend in the flow of language the sudden flash of poetry.

James Baldwin was born for truth. It called upon him to tell it on the mountains, to preach it in Harlem, to sing it on the Left Bank in Paris. His honesty and courage would lead him to see truth and to write truth in poetry, drama, fiction, and essay. He was a giant.

Proud bones such as yours the world finds rare;
These are the crags of a true eccentric.
You wield your brush like a roof beam, propelled by wine;
From out your bosom pour rugged rocks.

[Bai Juyi] utilized Confucianism to order his conduct, utilized Buddhism to cleanse his mind, and then utilized history, paintings, mountains, rivers, wine, music and song to soothe his spirit.

The sea is the obsession of the poet, because the first poetic rhythm, or the first sense of poetic rhythm, was born of the motion of the waves.