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Forces of Imagination: Writing on Writing
Cultural Writing. From one of our most esteemed contemporary poets, a collection of essays about reading and poetics, written over many decades, and touching on many centuries. "We expect poets to give a first-hand account of what poetry is. But some poets, when they write criticism, produce a kind of prose that is itself on the verge of being poetry. Valery, Stevens and Marianne Moore belong to this "visionary company." And so does Barbara Guest, whose writings on poetry, collected here, are among the most inspiring works of their kind. It is a deep pleasure to know that such writing can still exist" --John Ashbery.
112 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 2002
4 people are currently reading
181 people want to read
About the author
Barbara Guest
51 books28 followersBarbara Guest, née Barbara Ann Pinson (September 6, 1920 – February 15, 2006), was an American poet and prose stylist. Guest first gained recognition as a member of the first generation New York School of poetry.[1] Guest wrote more than 15 books of poetry spanning sixty years of writing. In 1999, she was awarded the Frost Medal for Lifetime Achievement by the Poetry Society of America. Guest also wrote art criticism, essays, and plays. Her collages appeared on the covers of several of her books of poetry. She was also well known for her biography of the poet H.D., Herself Defined: The Poet H.D. and Her World (1984).
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
April 8, 2009
“Be slow at first in permitting your passionate beliefs to surface; they will be pummeled on the surface of someone else’s thought.”
March 8, 2018
A celebration of imagination, of art, and poetry. I am now interested in reading many of the poets she mentions, especially H.D., and will be coming back to reading this wonderful and inspiring book.
May 2, 2024
A New Bible 4 Me…
“Words contain their own beauty of face, but they desire an occupation. They cannot exist on beauty or necessity alone” (29)
“Words of the poem need dimension. They desire finally— an education in space. The poet needs to understand the auditory and spatial needs of a poem to free it so that the poem can locate its own movement, so that it is freed to find its own voice, it’s own rhythm or accent or power” (30)
“Imagination is clair-obscur. It is also “the absent flower” of Mallarmé. A turbulent presence. And we must acknowledge this “turbulent presence” because it is there to save the poem from a disobedient disregard of its own nature” (32)
“The person with the omnipotence of a cloud hovers over a poem pointing to the direction that it should take” (40)
“Richard Wollheim writes: “the artist is essentially a spectator of his work” (41)
“It is the gathering together of varying instructions by the concealed person that presents us with what we may call a “reliable” landscape” (42).
“You have to keep on the edge of something./ all the time, or the picture dies” —William de Kooning” (44)
“Image is a locus between intuition and concept” (58)
“In exile there is freedom, also. Freedom to maneuver, freedom to adopt a persona. And freedom, in particular, to use a language in whatever context you wish. Language is private. Language speaks your language” (66)
“To arrange its dimensions the poem stretches (looking outwardly and inwardly), thus obtaining a plasticity that the flat, the basic words, what we call “the language of the poem,” demand, and further, depend on… This cannot be achieved through language alone, but arrived from tensions placed on Structure: variability of meter, fleeting moods of expression, mutability of consonants and vowels…Respect your private language” (78).
"[Wallace] Stevens called a poem 'a finikin thing of air.' At its beginning, a poem floats on thin air until it is bolstered in its flight by "a purple bird" that shares the extravagance of being rare. His is a Byzantine way of entering a poem, to call it a piece of air, to let it sing, then to conclude it is rare...In whatever disguise reality becomes visible to the poet, there is the choice of withdrawing from its visibility to create a secret life. The poem is the unburdening of ghosts of the past who have come to haunt the writer exposed to the labyrinth. These are ghosts not words; they are the ephemera that surround and decorate the mind of the poet, a halo rescued from life. And it is the poet's halo that we see arching within the poem, not the full dress of rhyme or structure. Not the artifice of landscape or the surround of language. Shelley liked to think of spirits hid in a cloud, and Byzantine poets imagined genies escpaing from familiar earthenware bottles, and Blake drew angels. Mandelstam heard the inner sound "spilling into his fingers" (85)
"Imagination is the spirit inside the poem, a nostalgia for the infinite, louder than silk" (85)
"The inner sound of the poet protects the poet" (86)
"Vision is conjoined to the poet's spiritual life, of which the poem itself is a resume. The "spirit" or the "vision" of a poem arises from the contents of the poet's unconscious. The poet directs this "spillover" into the poem...The place where vision should glow in a poem may also be occupied by ideas. These ideas, unless proceeding from vision, are the utensils of words. Inorganic, they preempt the shape of vision... Words without vision are deprived of stability...Words contain their own beauty of face, but they desire an occupation. They cannot exist on beauty or necessity alone. They need dimension. They desire finally an elevation in space. The poet of vision understands the auditory and emotional needs of the words and frees them so that the word becomes both an elemental and physical being, and continuous in movement" (88).
"Be slow at first in permitting your passionate beliefs to surface; they will be pummeled on the surface of someone else's thoughts" (90)
"Poetry makes monstrous demands on the poet. The poem, itself, is a battlefield. But what a battlefield! And on this terrain the poet can select several weapons. One of which is nature or the green point, the green eye of vision. The greenery becomes eloquent. Nature is a quick entry into lyricism, because for one thing it is so eloquent. The poem notes the entrance of greenery, a green vision with a voice" (92).
"Allow yourself to find the archaic in a poem, like driving on rockbound surfaces. The needs the archaic to support it/ a piece of the past/" (93)
"What we are setting out to do is to delimit the work of art, so that it appears to have no beginning and no ends, so that is overruns the boundaries of the poem on the page. All of the arts share this need for delimiting... Coleridge said that a poem must be both obscure and clear. This is what we search for in our poem, this beautiful balance between the hidden and the open" (100)
"A poem should tremble a little" (101)
"Baudelaire continually reminds us that the magic of art is inseparable from its risks. And this risk is also a necessary component of poetry as it performs its balancing act between reality and the imaginative force at work within the poem. The poet enters the poem with a hood over the poet's eyes. The poet has arrived from a distance from a real world" (106).
“Words contain their own beauty of face, but they desire an occupation. They cannot exist on beauty or necessity alone” (29)
“Words of the poem need dimension. They desire finally— an education in space. The poet needs to understand the auditory and spatial needs of a poem to free it so that the poem can locate its own movement, so that it is freed to find its own voice, it’s own rhythm or accent or power” (30)
“Imagination is clair-obscur. It is also “the absent flower” of Mallarmé. A turbulent presence. And we must acknowledge this “turbulent presence” because it is there to save the poem from a disobedient disregard of its own nature” (32)
“The person with the omnipotence of a cloud hovers over a poem pointing to the direction that it should take” (40)
“Richard Wollheim writes: “the artist is essentially a spectator of his work” (41)
“It is the gathering together of varying instructions by the concealed person that presents us with what we may call a “reliable” landscape” (42).
“You have to keep on the edge of something./ all the time, or the picture dies” —William de Kooning” (44)
“Image is a locus between intuition and concept” (58)
“In exile there is freedom, also. Freedom to maneuver, freedom to adopt a persona. And freedom, in particular, to use a language in whatever context you wish. Language is private. Language speaks your language” (66)
“To arrange its dimensions the poem stretches (looking outwardly and inwardly), thus obtaining a plasticity that the flat, the basic words, what we call “the language of the poem,” demand, and further, depend on… This cannot be achieved through language alone, but arrived from tensions placed on Structure: variability of meter, fleeting moods of expression, mutability of consonants and vowels…Respect your private language” (78).
"[Wallace] Stevens called a poem 'a finikin thing of air.' At its beginning, a poem floats on thin air until it is bolstered in its flight by "a purple bird" that shares the extravagance of being rare. His is a Byzantine way of entering a poem, to call it a piece of air, to let it sing, then to conclude it is rare...In whatever disguise reality becomes visible to the poet, there is the choice of withdrawing from its visibility to create a secret life. The poem is the unburdening of ghosts of the past who have come to haunt the writer exposed to the labyrinth. These are ghosts not words; they are the ephemera that surround and decorate the mind of the poet, a halo rescued from life. And it is the poet's halo that we see arching within the poem, not the full dress of rhyme or structure. Not the artifice of landscape or the surround of language. Shelley liked to think of spirits hid in a cloud, and Byzantine poets imagined genies escpaing from familiar earthenware bottles, and Blake drew angels. Mandelstam heard the inner sound "spilling into his fingers" (85)
"Imagination is the spirit inside the poem, a nostalgia for the infinite, louder than silk" (85)
"The inner sound of the poet protects the poet" (86)
"Vision is conjoined to the poet's spiritual life, of which the poem itself is a resume. The "spirit" or the "vision" of a poem arises from the contents of the poet's unconscious. The poet directs this "spillover" into the poem...The place where vision should glow in a poem may also be occupied by ideas. These ideas, unless proceeding from vision, are the utensils of words. Inorganic, they preempt the shape of vision... Words without vision are deprived of stability...Words contain their own beauty of face, but they desire an occupation. They cannot exist on beauty or necessity alone. They need dimension. They desire finally an elevation in space. The poet of vision understands the auditory and emotional needs of the words and frees them so that the word becomes both an elemental and physical being, and continuous in movement" (88).
"Be slow at first in permitting your passionate beliefs to surface; they will be pummeled on the surface of someone else's thoughts" (90)
"Poetry makes monstrous demands on the poet. The poem, itself, is a battlefield. But what a battlefield! And on this terrain the poet can select several weapons. One of which is nature or the green point, the green eye of vision. The greenery becomes eloquent. Nature is a quick entry into lyricism, because for one thing it is so eloquent. The poem notes the entrance of greenery, a green vision with a voice" (92).
"Allow yourself to find the archaic in a poem, like driving on rockbound surfaces. The needs the archaic to support it/ a piece of the past/" (93)
"What we are setting out to do is to delimit the work of art, so that it appears to have no beginning and no ends, so that is overruns the boundaries of the poem on the page. All of the arts share this need for delimiting... Coleridge said that a poem must be both obscure and clear. This is what we search for in our poem, this beautiful balance between the hidden and the open" (100)
"A poem should tremble a little" (101)
"Baudelaire continually reminds us that the magic of art is inseparable from its risks. And this risk is also a necessary component of poetry as it performs its balancing act between reality and the imaginative force at work within the poem. The poet enters the poem with a hood over the poet's eyes. The poet has arrived from a distance from a real world" (106).
December 9, 2025
i am a barbara guest stan. underrated genius
March 14, 2009
I've been thinking about Barbara Guest’s essay, “Invisible Architecture,” in Forces of Imagination. I disagree with Guest’s proposal that poetry is channeled by an “invisible agency”—this is so reminiscent of Wordsworth’s “invisible workmanship.” Also, I don’t think poetry is the true fiction. True? I have the same issue with Stevens' word "supreme." And with the city named "Superior" just down the road. I prefer the name of the tiny Iowa town, "What Cheer." The what makes all the difference.
February 2, 2011
This fascinating collection of essays by poet Barbara Guest looks at nature of art and poetry and discusses the idea of imagination in a poets life and work. Her style essays are often poetry in and of themselves, delving into strong form and powerful language to convey her ideas. This is a book that should really be read multiple times and discussed among a group, as her thoughts are open to multiple interpretations.
Want to read
November 24, 2008Blog for KSP
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Reviews, interviews, and other features relating to experimental writing by women are welcome. Visual artists, we would love to post images, so do consider submitting broadsides and other collaborations with writers.
Contact amber@kelseyst.com
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If you would like to submit to the blog, please send a query.
Reviews, interviews, and other features relating to experimental writing by women are welcome. Visual artists, we would love to post images, so do consider submitting broadsides and other collaborations with writers.
Contact amber@kelseyst.com
www.kelseyst.com
April 15, 2013
a poetic take on writing poetry. applicable to painting as well. she can effectively put words to her unique and authoritative way of seeing. bootstraps you out of consensus reality into visionary altered perception.
August 16, 2007
encouraging and accessible..."invisible architecture" is one of my favorite short essays on poetics. stems away from being theoretical; is graceful and articulate, in that barbara-guest sort of way.
November 21, 2010
A nice collection of Guest's speeches, and some thoughts on her own poetics weaved into some of her poems.
October 22, 2014
My god! what a mind.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews