Like the Fire Through the Mountain

"The truly contemporary force is something that is built of the past, but with a difference. Most of what calls itself contemporary is built, whether it knows it or not, out of a desire to be liked. It is created in imitation of what already exists and is already admired. There is, in other words, nothing new about it. To be contemporary is to rise through the stack of the past, like the fire through the mountain. Only a heat so deeply and intelligently born can carry a new idea into the air."

--Mary Oliver, A Poetry Handbook