Quote

I measure myself Against a tall tree I find that I am much taller, For I reach right up to the sun With my eye And I reach to the shore of the sea With my ear. Nevertheless, I dislike The way the ants crawl In and out of my shadow.

Wallace Stevens

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Wallace Stevens
Age: 75 †
Born: 1879
Born: October 2
Died: 1955
Died: August 2
Journalist
Lawyer
Playwright
Poet
Poet Lawyer
Writer
Right
Ears
Taller
Much
Sea
Crawl
Way
Shadow
Ants
Sun
Nevertheless
Reach
Dislike
Tree
Shore
Eye
Tall
Find
Measure

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Life's nonsense pierces us with strange relation.
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The imagination loses vitality as it ceases to adhere to what is real.
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It is the unknown that excites the ardor of scholars, who, in the known alone, would shrivel up with boredom.
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A poem need not have a meaning and like most things in nature often does not have.
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All the great things have been denied and we live in an intricacy of new and local mythologies, political, economic, poetic, which are asserted with an ever-enlarging incoherence.
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It has to be living, to learn the speech of the place, It has to face the man of the time.
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Poetry is poetry, and one's objective as a poet is to achieve poetry precisely as one's objective in music is to achieve music.
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