Art & Creativity Quote by Brian Harris

Originality is mostly a rearrangement job, and Brian Harris knows it. His line deflates the romantic myth of the poet as a solitary genius conjuring language from thin air. Instead, poets work with hand-me-down material: phrases, rhythms, clichés, idioms, the verbal furniture of everyday life. The trick is not inventing new words but reordering familiar ones until they start telling the truth differently.

The intent here is quietly corrective. Harris is arguing that poetry earns its keep through sequence: what comes first, what gets delayed, what collides. “You have heard before” nods to the communal nature of language; none of us owns it. “In a new sequence” points to craft as a kind of editorial intelligence. Poetry becomes a technology of attention, forcing the reader to hear the ordinary with fresh ears because the expected pathway has been rerouted.

The subtext is a defense against the lazy accusation that poetry is pretentious or needlessly obscure. If the words are already yours, Harris implies, then the barrier isn’t vocabulary; it’s perception. Sequence can expose the emotional circuitry hidden inside stock phrases, or make an overused sentiment land with bite by changing its angle, pacing, or proximity to other words.

Contextually, this fits a contemporary moment obsessed with “content” and novelty while drowning in repetition. Harris suggests the durable art isn’t newness for its own sake; it’s recombination with intent. In that sense, the poet looks less like a magician and more like a DJ: same samples, sharper mix, suddenly the room hears it.