Friday, May 24, 2024

Reading the poets

 I’ve been reading the poets lately. Ancient ones, contemporary ones, old friends, strangers. I’m not sure I need an excuse. But if I do, here’s Joubert: 

Do you want to know how thought functions, to know its effects? Read the poets. Do you want to know about morality, about politics? Read the poets. What pleases you in them, deepen: it is the truth. 

 

• Source: The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, translated with an introduction by Paul Aster; New York: New York Review of Books, 2005, p. 3.

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