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David Biespiel Biography

Poet

David Biespiel is a renowned American contemporary poet, born on February 18, 1964. His poetry is known for its profound humanistic concern and unique artistic style, which has won him a wide audience.

Related Quotes

“American poetry is a mess. Long live American poetry.”

Long Mess Poetry Is American Poetry

Author:David Biespiel

“Poetry is an art spoken, as if sung, in relation to other human beings.”

Ifs Humans Art Human Beings Relation Poetry Is

Author:David Biespiel

“Campion is a poet who knows that what a poet sees is nothing without a mixture of formal prowess and emotional insight.”

Knows Emotional Poet Insight Formal Mixtures Prowess

Author:David Biespiel

“For a long time, I saw writing prose as chewing rocks compared to the velocities of writing poetry.”

Writing Long Prose Writing Poetry

Author:David Biespiel

“I think that as poets, we can get away with stuff because we can ride on the melt of metaphor. We cover a lot of terrain psychically and temporally and linguistically via metaphor, and that can be a stand-in for an argument, whereas in prose, you have to make the argument, and you have to be convincing because the sequence must make sense in time and purpose.”

Thinking Purpose Poet Argument Metaphor Make Sense Prose Get Away Convincing

Author:David Biespiel

“Literary lineage is part of your autobiography. The authors are the literary base, the image base, the character base that you bring into your civilian work. Same with film, architecture, music, sports. That's one tributary of the autobiography.”

Character Film Sports Architecture Autobiography

Author:David Biespiel

“I think I did experience culture shock. When I first arrived in Boston, I was basically told to go home. "Homeboy" is what they called me - very funny. I didn't take offense. I just thought, This is exactly where I want to be. The pace was different. Houston is a sprawling city. Boston is just crammed into the size of a postage stamp.”

Thinking Different Home Culture Offense

Author:David Biespiel

“I'm not going to tell people how to write, but we do have a skill set, and the more we put ourselves out into the world as poets, as a sort of poet of the tribe, as representatives of metaphor, and try to claim space for metaphor in the inner life, that's going to be important and be helpful to poetry and bring a tension for poets writing about whatever they choose.”

People World Writing Trying Important Poet Metaphor Tension Helpful

Author:David Biespiel

“Because so many poets have chosen a political idiom right now in the US and so many poets have assigned value and inherent knowledge to their racial identity and used that as a form of argumentation, I'm thinking now's a good time to buy low for my own poems and write poems that are deeply in the interior and the psyche. There are plenty of people out there working on subjects of political poetry, partisan poetry, all the way through to crossing the threshold of propaganda. I start thinking now's a good time for me to start writing about the myths of my own psyche.”

People Thinking Writing Political Values Identity Poet Myth Chosen Plenty Propaganda Good Times Idiom

Author:David Biespiel

“There's not a big range in the political poetry of the last year, or not a political range. On the one hand, no poet that I know of who writes in English in the United States is anything but a humanist. So all poets, including myself, seem to be under that umbrella. We just don't have Rush Limbaugh poets, Ann Coulter poets.”

Writing Political Poet Humanist Umbrella

Author:David Biespiel

“A writer's job is not complete without attention to precision. What you're trying to be precise about is your relationship to the observed thing. And "observed thing" could include remembered thing, fantasized thing, fictionalized thing, recorded thing, trans-altered thing. It's the model that's in front of you or in your brain or your memory or whatever. So you're trying to be precise about what it is you're seeing because it's very unlikely that you're going to be able to depict it as it is.”

Trying Memories Attention Brain Our Relationship Our Memories

Author:David Biespiel

“My revision methods are chipping things away and moving them around and trying to get things right. I'm also open in my own writing to failure. I want to fail. I want to go to a place where I don't know what I'm doing, where maybe I'm lost. And in that uncertain space, I make decisions, and I know all those decisions are going to change everything else. And at a certain point, you just come to a place of rest. In revising, you reduce your options so that nothing is possible, and you just think, I can't change this anymore because I've already passed that decision point.”

Thinking Writing Trying Moving Decision Failing

Author:David Biespiel

“I exaggerate. I oversimplify. I generalize. But there’s no cynicism here. American poetry is a mess. Long live American poetry.”

Long Mess Poetry Is Cynicism American Poetry

Author:David Biespiel

About the Author

Born: February 18, 1964
Known for: Poet
Quotes: 13

Books & Sources

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