As an independent scholar and renegade researcher, there’s nothing I love more than coming across a super-cool book I’ve never seen before, especially if it’s old, and awesome, and I get it for 25 cents at a library book sale.
Check out these quotes from The Situation of Poetry, a 1955 work by Raissa and Jaques Maritain. (I had known something of J. Maritain as an influence on Martin Luther King Jr., and also, Thomas Berry had mentioned to me that Maritain had influenced him. I did not know that Maritain had written on poetry.)
The Situation of Poetry:
Four Essays on the Relations between Poetry, Mysticism, Magic, and Knowledge
by Jaques and Raissa Maritain
"Poetry is the fruit of a contact of the spirit with reality, which is in itself ineffable, and with the source of reality, which we believe to be God himself in that movement of love which causes him to create images of his beauty. That which is thus conceived in the mysterious retreats of being is expressed with a certain savory illogic, which is not nonsense but a superabundance of sense."
—Raissa Maritain, p. 21
And check out this great quote from a footnote on p. 29:
"The originals of the images and forms which the language of dreams, poetry, and prophecy employs are found in the Nature which surrounds us and which appears to us like a world of Dream incarnate: like a prophetic language whose hieroglyphs were beings and forms."
—G. H. von Schubert, quoted in The Situation of Poetry (1955)
About Drew Dellinger
Drew Dellinger, Ph.D., is an internationally known speaker, poet, writer, and teacher whose keynotes and poetry performances—which address ecology, justice, cosmology, and connectedness—have inspired minds and hearts around the world. He is also a consultant, filmmaker, and founder of Planetize the Movement.
Dellinger has presented at over 1400 events across the US, UK, Canada, and Australia. He has spoken and performed at numerous conferences—including TEDWomen, Bioneers, the Green Festival, the Dream Reborn, and the Parliament of the World’s Religions—as well as colleges and universities, poetry venues, protests, and places of worship.
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