George Mackay Brown
Scottish poet
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
Language unstable as sand, but poets
Strike on hard rock, carving
Rune and hieroglyph , to celebrate
Breath's sweet brevity.
—George Mackay Brown, Scottish poet, To a Hamnavoe Poet of 2093, 1996
Posted on May 24, 2000 at 1:34 PM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
It is the word, blossoming as legend, poem, story, secret, that holds a community together and gives meaning to its life. If words become functional ciphers merely, as they are in white papers and business letters, they lose their 'ghosts' — the rich aura that has grown about them from the start, and grows infinitesimally richer every time they are spoken. They lose more; they lose their 'kernel', the sheer sensuous relish of utterance. Poetry is a fine interpenetration of ghost and kernel.
—George Mackay Brown, Scottish poet, An Orkney Tapestry, 1969
Posted on September 10, 1998 at 6:42 PM
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