Quote of the Day (Czeslaw Milosz, on ‘The Very Essence of Poetry’)

“In the very essence of poetry there is something indecent:  

a thing is brought forth which we didn’t know we had in us,  

so we blink our eyes, as if a tiger had sprung out  

and stood in the light, lashing his tail.”— Polish-American Nobel Prize-winning poet, essayist, translator and diplomat Czeslaw Milosz (1911-2004), “Ars Poetica?,” translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Lillian Vallee, included in The Collected Poems 1931-1987 (1988)