"Poetry most often communicates emotions, not directly,..." - Quote by C S Lewis
Poetry most often communicates emotions, not directly, but by creating imaginatively the grounds for those emotions. It therefore communicates something more than the emotion; only by means of that something more does it communicate the emotion at all.
More by C S Lewis
“I'm a beast, I am, and a Badger what's more. We don't change. We hold on.”
“Once the feet are put right, all the rest of him will follow.”
“Perhaps civilization will never be safe until we care for something else more than we care for it. The hypothesis has certain facts to support it. As far as peace (which is one ingredient in our idea of civilization)is concerned, I think many would now agree that a foreign policy dominated by desire for peace is one of the many roads that lead to war.”
More on Poetry
“Peitaho Heavy rains fall on Yuyen, the northland kingdom of swallows. White pages of rain envelop the sky, and fishing boats off the Island of the Emperor Chin disappear on the ocean. Which way have they gone? More than a thousand years ago the mighty emperor Tsao Tsao cracked his whip and drove his army against the Tartars. He left us a poem: "Let us move east to the Stone Mountains." Today we still shiver in the autumn gale, in desolate winds, yet another man is in the world.”
“And let me touch those curving claws of yellow ivory; and grasp the tail that like a monstrous asp coils round your heavy velvet paws.”
“I was born upon thy bank, river, My blood flows in thy stream, And thou meanderest forever, At the bottom of my dream.”
More on Emotion
“You are not wood, you are not stones, but men;And being men, hearing the will of Caesar,It will inflame you, it will make you mad.”
“I feel I should try to reveal. When you hit it right, you produce an emotional response in the listener that can be cathartic. When you're wrong, you're soppy, sentimental.”
“And how moving is the eloquence of the untaught when it is the heart that is speaking!”