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I Would Then Say That There Are Two Kinds Of Feeling. The First Is To Feel In The Sense Of Concentrating Your Emotions On Something Immediately Available For Your Understanding: You Make Your Understanding Out Of The Emotions You Have About It. The Second Is To Feel In The Sense Of Being Affected Without Trying To Understand: Something Is Felt, You Do Not Know What, And It Is More Important To Feel It Than To Try To Understand It, Since Once You Try To Understand It You No Longer Feel It.

-Laura Riding

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I Would Then Say

Laura Riding

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I Would Then Say That There Are Two Kinds Of Feeling. The First Is To Feel In The Sense Of Concentrating Your Emotions On Something Immediately Available For Your Understanding: You Make Your Understanding Out Of The Emotions You Have About It. The Second Is To Feel In The Sense Of Being Affected Without Trying To Understand: Something Is Felt, You Do Not Know What, And It Is More Important To Feel It Than To Try To Understand It, Since Once You Try To Understand It You No Longer Feel It.

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Conversation Succeeds Conversation, Until There's Nothing Left To Talk About Except Truth, The Perennial Monologue, And No Talker To Dispute It But Itself.

There Can Be No Literary Equivalent To Truth.

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To A Poet The Mere Making Of A Poem Can Seem To Solve The Problem Of Truth…but Only A Problem Of Art Is Solved In Poetry.

She [venison] Had Never Travelled And So Could Invent All Kinds Of Strange Places Without Being Limited, As Travelled People Are, By Knowledge Of Certain Places Only.

I Met God. 'what,' He Said, 'you Already?' 'what,' I Said, 'you Still?

Anger Is Precious Because It Is An Immediate, Undeniable Clue To What Our Minds (so Much More Cautious In Rejection And Resistance Than Our Bodies) Will Not Tolerate.

Women Are Strangers In The Country Of Man.

Nature Is What You Don't Have To Trouble About. It Looks After Itself.

The Sciences That Purport To Treat Of Human Things -- The New Scientific Storyings Of The Social, The Political, The Racial Or Ethnic, And The Psychic, Nature Of Human Beings -- Treat Not Of Human Things But Mere Things, Things That Make Up The Physical, Or Circumstantial, Content Of Human Life But Are Not Of The Stuff Of Humanity, Have Not The Human Essence In Them.

... Whatever Is Not Happening Now Is Unimportant; It Is Merely Curious.

We Wait, All, For A Story Of Us That Shall Reach To Where We Are. We Listen For Our Own Speaking; And We Hear Much That Seems Our Speaking, Yet Makes Us Strange To Ourselves.

The New "ambiguity" Means, In A Way Adjudged Favorable To Literary, Poetic, Intellectually And Psychologically Well-devised And Praiseworthily Executed Linguistic Performance, Uncertainty Of Meaning, Or Difficulty For The Interpreter In Identifying Just What The Meaning In Question Is: It Means The Old Meanings Of Ambiguity With A Difference. It Means Uncertainty Of Meaning (of A Word Or Combination Of Words) Purposefully Incorporated In A Literary Composition For The Attainment Of The Utmost Possible Variety Of Meaning-play Compressible Within The Verbal Limits Of The Composition.

What Second Love Could She [olympias] Make Out Of Her Ruined First Love? The Second Love That Most Women Make Out Of Their First Love For Husbands Grows From A Mutual And Tacit Sadness In Both Husband And Wife That He Is Only In Rare Moments The Man Both Would Like Him To Be.

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When Modernist Poetry, Or What Not So Long Ago Passed For Modernist Poetry, Can Reach The Stage Where The Following Piece By Mr. Ezra Pound Is Seriously Offered As A Poem, There Is Some Justification For The Plain Reader And Orthodox Critic Who Shrinks From Anything That May Be Labelled 'modernist' Either In Terms Of Condemnation Or Approbation. Better He Thinks, That Ten Authentic Poets Should Be Left For Posterity To Discover Than One Charlatan Should Be Allowed To Steal Into The Temple Of Fame.

Much Of The Magical Effect That Poetry Gives Of Rendering Everything It Touches Pellucid Comes From The Necessity Of Compression That It Imposes. The Impossibility Of Pausing In Poetry As Long As May Be Needed To Make Sense Clear Causes Many A Set Of Words Actually Deficient In Linguistic Workmanship To Pass For An Eloquent Brevity.

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To Tell One Comprehensive Story Of How It Has Happened That What Is Is, One Which Shall Hold True, Come What May, Now-after - A Story That Whatever Comes Shall Perfectly Continue Or Confirm: Such Is The Ideal Motive Of Religions.

The Rhythmic Pattern Of The Poem, Which Forces Continuity Of Attention - Incites A Pleasurable Compulsion To 'follow' - Is Either A Tried Metrical Suasion-contrivance Or A Specially Invented Pattern Of Physical Insistences, Equally, If Not More, Binding In Its Effect On The Reader. From A Straight Linguistic Point Of View, There Is Room For Wonder If There Is Not Latent Vice In This Environment In Which Pleasurable Physically-compelled Responses, Produced By Incidents Of Poetic Utterance, Are Identified With The Good.

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Ideas Are The Old-age Of Art. Artists Have To Keep Young; They Must Not Think Too Much - Thought Is Death, While Art Is Life. Such Was Emile's Viewpoint.

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I Would Then Say That There Are Two Kinds Of Feeling. The First Is To Feel In The Sense Of Concentrating Your Emotions On Something Immediately Available For Your Understanding: You Make Your Understanding Out Of The Emotions You Have About It. The Second Is To Feel In The Sense Of Being Affected Without Trying To Understand: Something Is Felt, You Do Not Know What, And It Is More Important To Feel It Than To Try To Understand It, Since Once You Try To Understand It You No Longer Feel It.

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My Function As A Writer Is Not Story-telling But Truth-telling: To Make Things Plain.

Telling The Truth

Polygamy And Polyandry Distribute The Frightening Physical Solidarity Of Monogamy. Monogamous Couples Are Always Hungry For Company: To Dilute Sex.

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Knowing Everything

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Until The Missing Story Of Ourselves Is Told, Nothing Besides Told Can Suffice Us: We Shall Go On Quietly Craving It.

People Get Wisdom From Thinking, Not From Learning.

Shakespeare Alternated Between Musical Surrenders To Social Prestige And Magnificent Fits Of Poetic Remorse.

A Religion Addresses The Longing In Us To Have That Said From Which We Can Go On To Speak Of Next And Next Things Rightly, In Their Immediate Time - The Telling Of What Came First And Before Done Forever.

Emile Saint-blague Had Been A Lively, Versatile Painter In His Youth, But He Had Abused His Energy By Painting Too Many Pictures; So That In What Might Have Been The Ripe Period Of His Art He Had Nothing Left But Ideas. A Man Who Has Nothing Left But Ideas May Be Of Great Service To His Friends, But He Is Of No Use At All To Himself. Emile Was Certainly An Inspiration To His Friends.

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I Believe That Misconceptions About Oneself That One Does Not Correct Where Possible Act As A Bad Magic.

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Women, Ever Since There Have Been Women, Have Had A Way Of Being People.

We Shall Know That We Have Begun To Speak True By An Increased Hunger For True-speaking; We Shall Have The Whole Hunger Only After We Have Given Ourselves The First Taste Of It.

The Terms 'male' And 'female' Must Be Understood As Representing No Mere Primitive Opposition Of Sex To Sex; But As Defining Two Worlds Of Differing Quality, In Either Of Which Men And Women May Jointly Move And Live.

Myth Is A Tale Once Believed As Truth; Believed, It Is Not Myth, But Religion. A Tale Once Religiously Believed That Has Come To Be Called A Myth Is Something Of Religion Corrupted With Disbelief. What Are Beliefs For Some Societies But Myths For Others Cannot Fill Spiritual Vacancies In The Life Of Those Others.

The Anthology Meets With Two Different Kinds Of Reactions In Living Poets. They Will Either Write Toward The Anthology Or Away From It. Anti-anthology Poets Often Overreach Themselves, Inflicting Protective Distortions On Their Work - As Parents In Old Central Europe Often Deliberately Maimed Their Sons To Save Them From Compulsory Military Service.

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