“I'm always glad that other people are way smarter about my poems than I am.” PeopleWayGladSmarter Author:Shane McCrae
“Confessionalism relates to writers of color. I think confessional poetry is in its way very Catholic, capital C. One of the formative ideas of Confessionalism, beyond psychoanalysis, is a very actual fall from grace. And, at least in America, people of color never occupy that position of grace the way that white people do. So I think that in some very actual ways the confessional mode, strictly speaking, is not possible for non-white writers.” PeopleThinkingFallGraceCatholicPoetry IsPsychoanalysis Author:Shane McCrae
“People get anxious about dividing sorts of poetry, say Confessionalism from political poetry. But Confessionalism is very much an expression of racial privilege and of class privilege. I don't think it's always a blind expression of these privileges but it does have its genesis in them, in the politics of them.” PeopleThinkingPoliticalBlindAnxiousGenesis Author:Shane McCrae
“I definitely notice the absence of character in most poetry, which is not so say that I'm an innovator in that regard. Character-based poems are not weird or new by any stretch but they feel strange and new because the atmosphere is one in which no one does that. People always talk about, and with good reason, poetry's unpopularity. When people say that they forget or they brush aside the fact that in the middle part of the last century poetry was immensely popular. Dylan Thomas was basically a rock star; so was Anne Sexton.” PeopleReasonCharacterForgetStrangeAbsenceAtmosphereDylanRock Star Author:Shane McCrae
