“I think a good deal may be said to extenuate the fault of bad Poets. What we call a Genius, is hard to be distinguish'd by a man himself, from a strong inclination: and if his genius be ever so great, he can not at first discover it any other way, than by giving way to that prevalent propensity which renders him the more liable to be mistaken.” IfsThinkingMenWayGivingFirstsMaySaidHardStrongDealsPoetGeniusFaultsMistakenCan NotInclinationLiablePropensityGiving Way Book:Poems: Pastoral poetry, and An essay on criticism Source: Poems: Pastoral poetry, and An essay on criticism
“Nowadays when a poet with one privately printed book can have his next three years taken care of by a Guggenheim fellowship, a Kenyon Review fellowship, and the Prix de Rome, it is hard to remember what chances the poet took in that small-town world, how precariously hand-to-mouth his existence was. And yet in one way the old days were better; [Vachel] Lindsay after a while, by luck and skill, got far more readers than any poet could get today.” WorldWayYearsBookHardHandsCareTodayRememberThreeNextChanceExistenceTakenPoetReaderSkillsMouthsTownsLuckOne WayReviewsRomeThree YearsSmall TownFellowshipPrintedOld DaysLuck And SkillPrinted Books Author:Randall Jarrell
“Imagism was a reductio ad absurdum of one or two tendencies of romanticism, such a beautifully and finally absurd one that it is hard to believe it existed as anything but a logical construction; and what imagist found it possible to go on writing imagist poetry? A number of poets have stopped writing entirely; others, like recurring decimals, repeat the novelties they commeced with, each time less valuably than before. And there are surrealist poetry, and political poetry, and all the othe refuges of the indigent.” WritingBelieveTwoHardPoliticalFoundNumbersPoetGoes OnAbsurdTendenciesRepeatsLogicalAdsConstructionRefugeNoveltyRomanticismHard To BelieveRecurringSurrealistDecimals Author:Randall Jarrell
“I have always wanted to play different kinds of stuff, but it's hard, first to find good material, and then to change people's perception of you so they'll let you do it. I mean, I would really like to play a poet, but once they get this notion of you as a street guy, it's hard to change that.” PeopleFirstsKindMeanDifferentHardPlayWantedGuyStuffStreetsPoetMaterialsPerceptionNotionDifferent Kinds Author:Matt Dillon
“The task of the mind is to produce future, as the poet Paul Valery once put it. A mind is fundamentally an anticipator, an expectation-generator. It mines the present for clues, which it refines with the help of the materials it has saved from the past, turning them into anticipations of the future. And then it acts, rationally, on the basis of those hard-won anticipations.” MindHardHelpingPastProduceMinesPoetMaterialsExpectationsTasksBasesSavedAnticipationClueGenerator Author:Daniel Dennett
“Joy is a part of my process. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that poetry, as a practice, necessitates a sense of joy. It's exhilarating to come into contact with the things we write into being. And a real sense of play and abandon even when we are relying on hard-won technique, and even when the aim is deadly serious. How often do we get the excuse to stop, think, and then stop thinking altogether and try to listen to what sits behind our outside of our thoughts? Poets are lucky.” ThinkingWritingTryingRealHardPlayFactsJoyPoetryProcessBehindsPracticeSeriousPoetLuckyAimExcuseTechniqueContactAbandonOur ThoughtsExhilarating Author:Tracy K. Smith
“A life lived in chaos is an impossibility for the artist. No matter how unstructured may seem the painter's garret in Paris or the poet's pad in Greenwich Village, the artist must have some kind of order or he will proudce a very small body of work. To create a work of art, great or small, is work, hard work, and work requires discipline and order.” KindMayArtMatterHardBodySeemsArtistOrderPoetHard WorkDisciplineChaosPainterParisWorks Of ArtVillageImpossibilityPadsGreenwichGreenwich Village Book:Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art Source: Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art