Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Margaret Atwood

Quote by Margaret Atwood

“Poetry isn't written from the idea down. It's written from the phrase, line and stanza up, which is different from what your teacher taught you to do in school.”

Quote by Margaret Atwood

Create image

Author

Margaret Atwood
Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood is a renowned Canadian poet, novelist, playwright, and critic, born on November 18, 1939. Her works are known for their unique style and profound insights into social issues, with notable titles including 'The Handmaid's Tale' and 'Cat's Eye'. more

You May Also Like

“As I get older, I recognize that my thinking about poetry may or may not have anything actively to do with my actual work as a poet. This strikes me as no thing cynically awry but rather seems again instance of that hapless or possibly happy fact, we do not as humans seem necessarily aware of what we are physically or psychically doing at all!”

ThinkingHumansMayFactsSeemsPoetStrikesInstance
Book:Was That a Real Poem & Other Essays
Create image

“There's a sameness about American poetry that I don't think represents the whole people. It represents a poetry of the moment, a poetry of evasion, and I have problems with this. I believe poetry has always been political, long before poets had to deal with the page and white space . . . it's natural.”

PeopleThinkingBelieveLongWholeMomentsProblemPoliticalI BelieveNaturalSpaceWhiteDealsPoetPagesSamenessEvasionAmerican PoetryThis I BelieveWhite Space
Author:Yusef Komunyakaa
Create image

“Mature art, I think, emerges when there's a certain balance of tensions, when there's neither neurotic prostration nor cold rationality, but an aura of energy and a drive to grasp personal "truths" still emerging into perception. To grasp and to shape them.”

ThinkingArtStillsCertainEnergyColdBalanceShapesPerceptionTensionMatureRationalityNeuroticEmergingAurasProstrationPersonal Truth
Book:The cow jumped over the moon: the writing and reading of poetry
Create image

“Contemporary poetry ... tries to transform the sign back into meaning: its ideal, ultimately, would be to reach not the meaning of words, but the meaning of things themselves. This is why it clouds the language, increases as much as it can the abstractness of the concept and the arbitrariness of the sign and stretches to the limit the link between signifier and signified.”

TryingWould BeLanguageLimitsConceptsIdealsIncreaseCloudsContemporaryLinksMeanings Of Words
Book:Barthes: Selected Writings
Create image