Snapshots from "A Poet's Sourcebook" (2)

From Aristotle

The poet, being an imitator, like a painter or any other artist, must of necessity imitate one of three objects: things as they were or are, things as they are said or thought to be, or things as they ought to be.

From Horace

But when I meet with beauties thickly sown,
A blot or two I readily condone,
Such as may trickle from a careless pen,
Or pass unwatched: for authors are but men.

From Ovid

Why, then, do I write, you wonder? I too wonder, and with you I often ask what I seek from it.

From Suetonius

When Virgil was writing the Georgics, it is said to have been his custom to dictate each day a large number of verses which he had composed in the morning and then to spend the rest of the day in reducing them to a very small number, wittily remarking that he fashioned his poem after the manner of a she-bear, and gradually licked it into shape.

From Badi al-Zaman al-Hamadhani

Tell me what verse is that, half of which elevates and half repels? And what verse is it the whole of which slaps? And what verse is that half of which is angry and half jests? And what verse is it the whole of which is mangy?

From Li Ch-ing Chao

                              I try
To write a poem in which
My tears will flow together
With your tears.

From Marie de France

Whoever has received knowledge
and eloquence in speech from God
should not be silent or secretive
but demonstrate it willingly.

From Dante Alighieri, translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Ah me! how hard a thing it is to say
What was this forest, savage, rough, and stern
Which in the very thought renews the fear.

From Francesco Petrarch

Strangely enough I long to write, but do not know what or to whom.

From an Aztec poet, translated by Denise Levertov

The carrion artist: works at random, sneers at the people,
makes things opaque, brushes across the surface of the face of things,
works without care, defrauds people, is a thief.