Laura Riding

Laura Riding
LauraJacksonwas an American poet, critic, novelist, essayist and short story writer...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth16 January 1901
CountryUnited States of America
writing mean practice
Pseudo-modernists pursue individual style because they know they cannot make a name without it; but if they had lived in the eighteenth century their sole object would have been to write correctly, to conform to the manner of the period. In practice, their conforming individualism means an imitation, studiously concealed, of the eccentricities of poems which really are individual.
mean play differences
The new "ambiguity" means, in a way adjudged favorable to literary, poetic, intellectually and psychologically well-devised and praiseworthily executed linguistic performance, uncertainty of meaning, or difficulty for the interpreter in identifying just what the meaning in question is: it means the old meanings of ambiguity with a difference. It means uncertainty of meaning (of a word or combination of words) purposefully incorporated in a literary composition for the attainment of the utmost possible variety of meaning-play compressible within the verbal limits of the composition.
art indeed referring source term utility
Art indeed is a term referring to the social source and to the social utility of creative acts.
art mere poem poet poetry problem seem solve solved truth
To a poet the mere making of a poem can seem to solve the problem of truth, but only a problem of art is solved in poetry.
closest full further intense interest intimacy loathing love name poetic relationship sympathize understand
I feel an intense intimacy with those who have this loathing interest in me. Further than this, I know what they mean, I sympathize with them, I understand them. There should be a name (as poetic as love) for this relationship between loather and loathed; it is of the closest and more full of passion than incest.
If you find something to tell, tell it to your truest, though that make little to tell; the truer you speak, the more you will know to tell.
conscious human nature pursuit responsibility truth
I am not 'in pursuit of truth.' It is not my 'quarry.' I am of my human nature a thinker, and conscious of need, responsibility of thinking-speaking with truth. I do not go about hunting 'truths.'
provision attainment practicals
When ... I comprehended that poetry had no provision in it for ultimate practical attainment of the rightness of work that is truth, but led on ever only to a temporizing less- than-truth ... I stopped.
real evil elements
Evil I had never found satisfactorily placeable as an integral element of the universal, or total, content of existence. Indeed, evil is evil just because there is no logical place for it, no room in reality for it. It is unreal, and yet real as something unreal.
learning thinking bridges
learning can be a bridge between doing and thinking. But then there is a danger that the person who uses learning as a bridge between doing and thinking may get stuck in learning and never get on to thinking ...
spiritual religious matter
rummaging in the storehouses of religious or literary history for myth-matter for ideational uses is of the nature of spiritual vulgarity.
spiritual religion vacancy
Myth is a tale once believed as truth; believed, it is not myth, but religion. A tale once religiously believed that has come to be called a myth is something of religion corrupted with disbelief. What are beliefs for some societies but myths for others cannot fill spiritual vacancies in the life of those others.
sleep poetry listening
Poetry is a sleep-maker for that which sits up late in us listening for the footfall of the future on to-day's doorstep.
people giving religion
In religion is much tiredness of people, a giving over of their doing to Someone Else.