Quotessence
Home / Authors / Lawrence Joseph Biography

Lawrence Joseph Biography

Poet

Related Quotes

“I've always believed that poetry must speak of realities as least as complicated as those spoken of in prose. I've read books of poems, even single poems, which are, for me, at least the equivalent of a short story or a novel. Martin Amis, in an interview with Saul Bellow in the early eighties, quotes Bellow asking, "Why not address 'the mysterious circumstance of being', say what it's like to be alive at this time, on this planet?" This has been and still is my ambition.”

BookRealitySpeakNovelCircumstancesAmbitionComplicatedMysteriousProseShort StoryAlways BelieveMy Ambition
Author:Lawrence Joseph
Create image

“The violence inherent in our systems and structures of power is a part of who we are - our thoughts, sensibilities, imaginations, language. We live in manifestations of it - permanent war, environmental destrucution, poverty, racism, misogyny, the assault on labor, torture in our prisons, capital punishment - a corporate capitalist state controlled by oligarchical interests for their own private profit and gain.”

WarLanguageInterestImaginationPovertyViolenceRacismLaborPrisonEnvironmentalManifestationTortureCapitalistSensibilityMisogynyCapital Punishment
Author:Lawrence Joseph
Create image

“Is there an aesthetic "fit" in my work between God and the world? The "I' in my poems has from the beginning identified himself as Catholic, and my books certainly can be read as presenting a Catholic theology "in a very particular sense." Catholicism is a faith morally identified with the human struggle for human dignity and justice. It is a vision of the world incarnationally rooted in the senses, a faith of and in spoken and written words - Scripture, "the Word of God," the Logos.”

WorldBookJusticeVisionStruggleFitDignityCatholicScriptureTheologyCatholicismWord Of GodAestheticPresentingHuman DignityWritten Word
Author:Lawrence Joseph
Create image