Two versions of yes, but

I

Yes,

One space spreads through all creatures equally –
inner-world-space. Birds quietly flying go
flying through us.                                                                          Rainer Maria Rilke                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

but,

They spoke to me of people, and of humanity.
But I've never seen people, or humanity.
I've seen various people, astonishingly dissimilar,
Each separated from the next by an unpeopled space.                 Fernando Pessoa

II

I in fact believe that we possess valid criteria for judging when criticism is good and when it is bad…But I also think it is a mistake to assume, and self-defeating to pretend, that these criteria are simple and obvious….To get progressively clearer to the multiple and interdependent discriminations involved requires the evolving give-and-take of dialogue…[W]hen a proponent says, ‘This is so, isn’t it?’ his interlocutor will reply, ‘Yes, but. . .’ M.H. Abrams, literary critic

The motto on his shield is a bold ‘YES BUT—.’ Dwight Macdonald, the critic writing of himself

Remember, I started out learning and appreciating literature at the time of the Black Arts Movement, when people were saying, ‘Look at what’s around you. Look at the people around you. Look at all that music around you.’ I was learning poetry at that time. So I was learning poetry when people were saying, ‘We don’t need no poems about trees. We need poems about the people.’ That was one of the things that you would hear from the people who wanted a certain kind of community poetry. But see, you’ve got a guy like me who’s listening to that, and I’ve been twelve miles out on the Bermuda reef and working in Alaska. My job was with nature. So when I picked up the Black Arts Movement, I picked it up with, ‘Yeah, yeah. But—.’ Ed Roberson, poet