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Quote by Donald Hall

“Every now and then I meet someone certain of personal greatness. I want to pat this person on the shoulder and mutter comforting words: "Things will get better! You won't always feel so depressed! Cheer up!"”

Quote by Donald Hall

Book:Poetry and ambition: essays, 1982-88

Work

Poetry and ambition: essays, 1982-88

This book compiles a series of essays that delve into the intersection of poetry and ambition, offering insights into the author's perspectives and experiences during the specified time period. more

Author

Donald Hall is a renowned American poet, born on September 20, 1928. His poetry is known for its simplicity, depth, and emotional richness, which has won him a wide audience. more

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“The truest and greatest Poetry, (while subtly and necessarily always rhythmic, and distinguishable easily enough) can never again, in the English language, be express'd in arbitrary and rhyming metre, any more than the greatest eloquence, or the truest power and passion.”

Enough Passion Language Arbitrary English Language Eloquence Truest Rhyming Greatest Poetry

Book:Specimen Days & Collect

Source: Specimen Days & Collect

“My biggest superhero of writing is Jorge Luis Borges, the Argentine fabulist. He's an amazingly perceptive writer, but also willing to make a joke.”

Writing Willing Jokes Superhero Borges

Author:John Hodgman

“On the one hand, I have wanted to supply documentation on myself by including material relevant to my emotions and ideas in my youth; and, on the other, not to let myself down by publishing inferior material. My poetry comes under the latter head. My only advice to the reader is to skip any verse that he sees coming.”

Ideas Hands Wanted Emotion Advice Youth Materials Reader Including Latter Relevant Publishing Verses Inferiors Skip Documentation

Author:Edmund Wilson

“A young poet in America should not be advised at the outset to give up all for the Muse-to seclude himself in the country, to live hand from mouth in Greenwich Village or to escape to the Riviera. I should not advise him even to become a magazine editor or work in a publisher's office. The poet would do better to study a profession, to become a banker or a public official or even to go in for the movies.”

Source: The shores of light: a literary chronicle of the twenties and thirties

“If at the end of your first ten or fifteen years of fighting and working and feeling, you find you've written one line of one poem, you'll be very lucky indeed.”

Ifs Years Firsts Ends Feelings Fighting Lines Written Lucky Ten Fifteen Fifteen Years One Line

Author:e. e. cummings

“My advice to all young people who wish to become poets is: do something easy, like learning how to blow up the world - unless you're not only willing, but glad, to feel and work and fight till you die.”

People World Feels Young Dies Fighting Wish Easy Advice Willing Poet Blow Glad

Author:e. e. cummings

“One of my secret instructions to myself as a poet is "Whatever you do, don't be boring."”

Secret Poet Boring Instruction

Author:Anne Sexton

“I am not sure, once a poet has found out what has been written already, and how it was written - once, in short, he has learnt his trade - that he should bother with literature at all. Poetry is not like surgery, a technique that can be copied. Every operation the poet performs is unique, and need never be done again.”

Needs Should Has Beens Done Found Literature Written Poet Unique Trade Technique Bother Operations Not Sure Poetry Is Surgery

Author:Philip Larkin

“Scheme not to make what's Another's your own; Be not a Dog for the sake of a Bone.”

Dog Sake Bones Schemes

Author:Arthur Guiterman

“We should nourish our souls on the dew of Poesy, and manure them as well.”

Should Wells Soul Dew Manure

Book:Afterthoughts

Source: Afterthoughts