I have often maintained that the best poet is he who prepares our daily bread: the nearest baker who does not imagine himself to be a god. He does his majestic and unpretentious work of kneading the dough, consigning it to the oven, baking it in golden colours and handing us our daily bread as a duty of fellowship. And, if the poet succeeds in achieving this simple consciousness, this too will be transformed into an element in an immense activity, in a simple or complicated structure which constitutes the building of a community, the changing of the conditions which surround mankind, the handing over of mankind’s products: bread, truth, wine, dreams.
—Pablo Neruda, Nobel Prize lecture
Bread, truth, wine, dreams: a poet describing poetry with a miniature poem.
He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1971 and his entire lecture is this lyrical. You can read it here: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1971/neruda/lecture/
Last week: George Balanchine gives the best interpretation.
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