Daily Inspiration Quote by James Broughton

“For me, prose walks, poetry dances” is a filmmaker’s way of drawing a line between moving through the world and moving the world. Broughton doesn’t dismiss prose; “walks” suggests steadiness, utility, a body getting from A to B. Prose is locomotion: it carries information, narrative, argument. But “dances” is the giveaway. Poetry, for him, isn’t merely heightened language; it’s kinetic pleasure, rhythm with intention, motion that doesn’t justify itself by arriving anywhere.

The genius is how the metaphor smuggles in an aesthetic manifesto. Walking is socially legible and industrious; dancing is excessive, intimate, sometimes suspect. Broughton aligns poetry with the ecstatic and the queer-adjacent (even when unspoken), a stance that fits his mid-century life as a West Coast avant-garde director who treated art as ritual, play, and liberation rather than product. You can hear the rebellion against a culture that prizes clarity, productivity, and “seriousness” over embodied joy.

As a director, Broughton would also recognize that meaning isn’t just semantic; it’s choreographic. Film editing, actor movement, the cadence of a line reading: these are poetic decisions. The quote quietly argues that poetry is not a genre but a mode of attention, one that turns language into performance. Prose gets you down the street. Poetry makes you feel the street under your feet, then makes you spin.