Ruiz liked to quote the Cuban surrealist writer José Lezama Lima, who stated that the task of the poet is "to go into a dark room and build a waterfall there".
In his next collection, Tuuliöinä (1953; "In Windy Nights"), he used the wind as the central metaphor for contemporary anxiety and alienation, and in Synnyinmaa (1955; "Fatherland") and Lehdet lehtiä (1958; "Leaves Are Leaves") he explores the creative process and finds it is the task of the poet to interpret humankind's common suffering.
The task of the poet, they insisted, was not to provide nostalgic dreams but to wake us up to reality.
For Schlegel, as for Wilhelm von Humboldt, the task of the poet and also of that of the translator is to broaden the signifying and expressive capacity of a language.
Throughout the Duino Elegies, Rilke explores themes of "the limitations and insufficiency of the human condition and fractured human consciousness ... mankind's loneliness, the perfection of the angels, life and death, love and lovers, and the task of the poet".
Together, the Duino Elegies are described as a metamorphosis of Rilke's "ontological torment" and an "impassioned monologue about coming to terms with human existence" discussing themes of "the limitations and insufficiency of the human condition and fractured human consciousness ... man's loneliness, the perfection of the angels, life and death, love and lovers, and the task of the poet".
Charles Augustus crowned his generosity, however, by agreeing to a wholly new basis for Goethe's presence in his duchy: Goethe was to be relieved of virtually all routine administrative tasks and freed to concentrate on the task of being a poet.
Recent scholarship on Prynne by Ryan Dobran and Piers Pennington and a forthcoming volume of his letters to Charles Olson all promise to continue the task of response and interpretation this poet so badly requires.
In English, in a poem of any length, the difference is significant, because rhyme royal relieves the poet of the task of providing two sets of three rhymes in each stanza, as in ottava rima.
He was also the god of poets.
