absolute poems

He waited 30 years for that run of poems that were absolute and couldn’t be ignored. All that time he felt them inside himself but they never came forth.

poetic engagement

There are many people who write poetry who are not poets. A ‘poet’ is someone whose engagement with the world is absolute and integral. There are writers of poetry who use language as a substitute for artist engagement.

no absolutes

There are no absolutes when it comes to language.

you stumble on them

Everywhere we seek the Absolute, and always we find only things.

—Novalis
Fragment No. 1; Variant: We seek the absolute everywhere and only ever find things. - Blüthenstaub (1798).

übersprache

The poem absolute, above all other human utterances.

absolute and mortal

Poetry

Its nature is to look
                               both absolute and mortal
as if a boy had passed through
or the imprint of his foot
                                        had been preserved
unchanged
                   under the ash of Herculaneum.

—Carl Rakosi, The Collected Poems of Carl Rakosi (National Poetry Foundation, 1986), p. 186

unconditional

Even though unreciprocated, my love of poetry remains absolute, pure.