In poetry, you must love the words, the ideas and the images and

Wallace Stevens, the philosopher-poet who wove complexity into beauty, once declared: “In poetry, you must love the words, the ideas and the images and rhythms with all your capacity to love anything at all.” These words are not casual advice, but a profound commandment to all who would enter the temple of poetry. For Stevens knew that poetry is not written by skill alone, nor by intellect alone—it is born from love, the deepest love, poured into every syllable, every cadence, every image that rises from the poet’s soul. Without such love, words are dead; with it, they pulse with life eternal.

The origin of this saying lies in Stevens’s own vision of poetry as the supreme act of imagination. A man who worked much of his life as an insurance executive, he found in poetry not escape but fulfillment. He recognized that the poet must be more than a craftsman; he must be a lover, one who surrenders completely to language. For to love words is to cherish them as vessels of meaning; to love ideas is to treasure their power to illuminate; to love images is to adore their capacity to reveal worlds unseen; and to love rhythms is to give oneself to the heartbeat of language itself.

Consider the life of John Keats, who lived but briefly and yet carved immortal verses into the soul of literature. Keats loved words with such fervor that his poems still shimmer with tenderness and fire. In his Ode to a Nightingale, his devotion to images and rhythms transforms longing into song, sorrow into beauty. His short years bore little worldly reward, but his poetry has endured for centuries because he wrote with all the capacity of love that Stevens describes. His life is a witness that true poetry demands no less than total devotion.

Stevens’s words also remind us that poetry is not a mechanical act. To write from calculation alone is to craft something sterile, as if carving a statue without breath. The poet who does not love words will abuse them; the poet who does not love rhythm will stumble in monotony. Only through love does poetry transcend artifice and become revelation. Just as a sculptor caresses the marble to find the figure within, so must the poet caress language until it yields its hidden song.

There is also a heroic challenge in Stevens’s teaching. He calls upon the poet to bring to language the same intensity of love that one would bring to a friend, a child, or a beloved. This is no small demand, for it means that poetry is not to be approached with half-heartedness, but with a whole capacity to love. To give oneself this fully to words is to risk exhaustion, to risk heartbreak, but also to taste the immortal. Poetry asks for sacrifice, and Stevens reminds us that the sacrifice is love itself.

The lesson for us is timeless: whatever you create—whether poetry, music, painting, or even the shaping of your daily life—you must love it with the fullness of your being. Only then will it bear the mark of truth, only then will it endure. If you treat your craft as a duty, it will wither; if you treat it as a beloved, it will bloom. Let this be your measure in all things: does your work carry the warmth of your love, or does it lie cold and lifeless?

Practically, this means approaching words as companions, not tools. Read poetry aloud, savoring the rhythm on your tongue. Linger over images, letting them open secret doors in your imagination. Write with patience and affection, not rushing to completion, but cherishing every phrase as one cherishes a conversation with the beloved. And in your life, extend this lesson further: love the work of your hands, love the days you are given, love the very act of living, with all your capacity to love anything at all.

Thus Wallace Stevens’s words endure like a sacred instruction: “In poetry, you must love the words, the ideas and the images and rhythms with all your capacity to love anything at all.” To love so fully is to create not merely verses, but vessels of life and truth. And when you live this way—loving deeply whatever you touch—you transform not only words upon a page, but your very existence into a poem that will echo long after you are gone.