You may write me down in history with your bitter, twisted lines. You may trod me in the very dirt, but still, like dust, I'll rise.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
The form of my poem rises out of a past that so overwhelms the present with its worth and vision that I'm at a loss to explain my delusion that there exist any real links between that past and a future worthy of it.
Let me read you some of my poetry. My poetry just takes me to another level.
'Learn your lines.' I want that on my gravestone.
I wanted to write the kind of poetry that people read and remembered, that they lived by - the kinds of lines that I carried with me from moment to moment on a given day without even having chosen to.
But you'd have a job to find many of my poems which would seem to be very influenced by a particular person.
The troubles of our proud and angry dust are from eternity, and shall not fail. Bear them we can, and if we can we must. Shoulder the sky, my lad, and drink your ale.
Whosoever, in writing a modern history, shall follow truth too near the heels, it may happily strike out his teeth.
I shall try to write a poem that is about the moment but doesn't betray things that are true to me as a poet.
The pull of history has been a strong theme in my life as a novelist.
The bells cease, and the power goes from me, and I descend again to the world of the living; and if in some foolish confiding moment I try to explain why I want to re-live those old days, to tear the Truth out of the past so that all men shall see plainly, perhaps someone will say to me, 'Oh, the War! A tragedy - best forgotten.'