Reminders
The part of the psyche that works in concert with consciousness and supplies a necessary part of the poem – the heat of a star as opposed to the shape of a star, let us say — exists in a mysterious, unmapped zone: not unconscious, not subconscious, but cautious.(…)
For the would-be writer of poems, this is the first and most essential thing to understand. It comes before everything, even technique.
(…)
Poetry is a river; many voices travel in it; poem after poem moves along in the exciting crests and falls of the river waves. None is timeless; each arrives in an historical context; almost everything, in the end, passes. But the desire to make a poem, and the world’s willingness to receive it– indeed the world’s need of it — these never pass.
Mary Oliver – Winner of Pulitzer Prize & the National Book Award
A Poetry Handbook