"[Poetry] is at all times the proper food of the understanding; but in an age of corrupt eloquence it is both food and antidote. In prose I doubt whether it be even possible to preserve our style wholly unalloyed by the vicious phraseology which meets us everywhere, from the sermon to the newspaper, from the harangue of the legislator to the speech from the convivial chair, announcing a toast or sentiment. Our chains rattle, even while while we are complaining of them. The poems of Boetius rise high in our estimation when we compare them with those of his contemporaries, as Sidonius Apollinarius, &c. They might even be referred to a purer age, but that the prose, in which they are set, as jewels in a crown of lead or iron, betrays the true age of the writer." --Coleridge, Biographica Litteraria, ch. XXII
"Once we dreamed of streetcleaners
Once we asked the question:
When will the leaves become birds?
Once we held our dead closely
As if there might be some word.
But the blood no longer dreams of poppies.
The rain is full of holes.
We’re at one with the season
That will not come."
--Ray Sweatman
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