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Quote by Alison Hawthorne Deming

“You see this incredible capacity for replication in nature, survival, development, all of these things that are around us all the time in nature that just happen. By comparison, human life is really, really complicated. We're gifted animals, but we are so complicated. Nothing is easy for us, except maybe eating too much.”

Quote by Alison Hawthorne Deming

Author

Alison Hawthorne Deming

Alison Hawthorne Deming is an accomplished American poet, born in 1946. Her poetry is characterized by its focus on natural themes and local history, and has garnered widespread acclaim from readers. more

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“Life seems complicated to me; I feel confused a lot of the time by life. I feel confused about the fact that we can be so tender as creatures to one another, and so monstrous at the same time.”

Feels Facts Seems Creatures Complicated Confused Monstrous

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“I think I started writing as a young person because I felt a lot of psychic confusion and emotional confusion, and writing was a way to sort it out. You know, to externalize it, sort it out, put it down, look at it, and hopefully it would become clearer.”

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“My goal is to be one with the music. I just dedicate my whole life to this art.”

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“I think you have to live inside your contradictions and find a way to accept that that's the human condition - to be forced to live in contradiction.”

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Author:Alison Hawthorne Deming

“I'm always writing towards a discovery. When I'm writing poems in particular, I'm often writing because a few images coalesced in my mind and I thought, "I wonder why these images are abrading against each other. I wonder what happens if put them in a poem and explore them." I'm trying to learn something every time I write a poem.”

Ifs Writing Trying Mind Happens Wonder Particular Discovery Writing Poems

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“I'm trying to learn something about making a balance between the inner life and the outer life. I wouldn't write if I didn't need to be making those discoveries, if I didn't feel the perpetual ignorance of being a human being.”

Ifs Needs Feels Writing Trying Humans Human Beings Ignorance Balance Discovery Perpetual Inner Life

Author:Alison Hawthorne Deming

“Poetry is a really helpful instrument. It's so physical; the musicality becomes a sort of expression of the body. The mind is there too, in the formal aspects of the poem. The emotions are there in the way the senses gather things into the poem.”

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“Poetry is one of the most full ways of discovering what it feels like to be a human being in this particular moment, in this particular set of concerns. It's all about discovery.”

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“A lot of times students will come up to me and say, "Well, I can't write because I don't know what I think about such-and-such." And I say, "That's why you have to write." You don't wait until you know, because then who cares - it's static.”

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“I'm always doing poems from a place of not-knowing, a place of ignorance in a way.”

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Author:Alison Hawthorne Deming