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Hayden Carruth Quotes

I had always been aware that the Universe is sad; everything in it, animate or inanimate, the wild creatures, the stones, the stars, was enveloped in the great sadness, pervaded by it. Existence had no use. It was

I had always been aware that the Universe is sad; everything in it, animate or inanimate, the wild creatures, the stones, the stars, was enveloped in the great sadness, pervaded by it. Existence had no use. It was without end or reason. The most beautfiul things in it, a flower or a song, as well as the most compelling, a desire or a thought, were pointless. So great a sorrow. And I knew that the only rest from my anxiety—for I had been trembling even in infancy—lay in acknowledging and absorbing this sadness.

Hayden Carruth
Song, Stars, Flower
Hayden Carruth (1998). “Reluctantly: Autobiographical Essays”, p.4, Copper Canyon Press

Now I am almost entirely love.

Hayden Carruth
Hayden Carruth (1996). “Scrambled Eggs & Whiskey: Poems, 1991-1995”

My poems, I think, exist in a state of tension between the love of natural beauty and the fear of natural meaninglessness or absurdity.

Hayden Carruth
Thinking, Natural, States
"Hayden Carruth, Poet and Critic, Dies at 87" by William Grimes, www.nytimes.com. September 30, 2008.

A poem is not an expression, nor is it an object. Yet it somewhat partakes of both. What a poem is is never to be known, for which I have learned to be grateful.

Hayden Carruth
Grateful, Expression, I Have Learned
Hayden Carruth (1989). “Tell Me Again how the White Heron Rises and Flies Across the Nacreous River at Twilight Toward the Distant Islands”, p.11, New Directions Publishing

Why speak of the use of poetry? Poetry is what uses us.

Hayden Carruth
Use, Speak, Poetry Is
Hayden Carruth (2006). “Toward the Distant Islands: New & Selected Poems”, p.25, Copper Canyon Press

My curiosity, alas, is not the kind that can be satisfied by objective knowledge. Plato said that opinion is worthless and that only knowledge counts, which is a neat formulation. ... But melancholy Danes from the northern mists understand that opinion is all there is. The great questions transcend fact, and discourse is a process of personality. Knowledge cannot respond to knowledge. And wisdom? Is it not opinion refined, opinion killed and resuscitated upward? Maybe Plato would have agreed with this.

Hayden Carruth
Plato, Men, Personality
"Reluctantly: Autobiographical Essays".

Any page by Paul Goodman will give you not only originality and brilliance but wisdom, that is, something to think about. He is our peculiar, urban, twentieth-century Thoreau, the quintessential American mind of our time.

Hayden Carruth
Thinking, Giving, Mind

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