P.K. Page > Quotes

“It was language I loved, not meaning. I liked poetry better when I wasn't sure what it meant. Eliot has said that the meaning of the poem is provided to keep the mind busy while the poem gets on with its work -- like the bone thrown to the dog by the robber so he can get on with his work. . . . Is beauty a reminder of something we once knew, with poetry one of its vehicles? Does it give us a brief vision of that 'rarely glimpsed bright face behind/ the apparency of things'? Here, I suppose, we ought to try the impossible task of defining poetry. No one definition will do. But I must admit to a liking for the words of Thomas Fuller, who said: 'Poetry is a dangerous honey. I advise thee only to taste it with the Tip of thy finger and not to live upon it. If thou do'st, it will disorder thy Head and give thee dangerous Vertigos.”
― P.K. Page, The Filled Pen: Selected Non-Fiction

“I had forgotten such innocence exists,/forgotten how it feels/ to live with neither calendars nor clocks”
― P.K. Page, Hologram Lp

“Is beauty a reminder of something we once knew, with poetry one of its vehicles? Does it give us a brief vision of that 'rarely glimpsed bright face behind/ the apparency of things'? Here, I suppose, we ought to try the impossible task of defining poetry. No one definition will do. But I must admit to a liking for the words of Thomas Fuller, who said: 'Poetry is a dangerous honey. I advise thee only to taste it with the Tip of thy finger and not to live upon it. If thou do'st, it will disorder thy Head and give thee dangerous Vertigos.”
― P.K. Page, The Filled Pen: Selected Non-Fiction

“Be prepared. And prepare.
But it's never like that.
It is where you are not
that the fissure occurs
and the light crashes in.”
― P.K. Page

“Then Treece realized a remarkable thing. He understood in a flash that everyone in the world was the same age -no one younger or older than anyone else. He could not understand it, but he knew it to be true. Was there something in the air of the world that made people appear to be old or middle-aged or young?”
― P.K. Page

“And as for the people you loved, even their names will escape you. Did you not mean what you said when you said, I will love you forever? You did. Though now it's hard to remember . . .”
― P.K. Page, Hologram Lp