“20th century poetry is a piñata. Images break from the earth when the poet strikes it.” EarthPoetryBreakCenturyPoetStrikesPoetry Is20th Century Author:Diane Glancy
“My biggest poetic influences are probably 20th-century British and Irish poets. So I suppose I'm always listening for the music I associate with that poetry, the telling images, the brevity. I want to hear it in my own work as well as in the poetry I read. However, I think I'm generally more forgiving of other poets than myself.” ThinkingWantWellsMy OwnInfluenceCenturyPoetListeningForgivingBritishPoeticAssociates20th CenturyBrevity Author:David Starkey
“To carry language from two dimensions into three is the task of the poets, and the rebels in the 20th Century.” TwoThreeLanguageCenturyPoetTasksDimensionsRebel20th Century Author:Terence McKenna
“The record of poetry in the 20th century isn't all that great anyway. Most of the poets who weren't fascists were Stalinists.” RecordsCenturyPoet20th CenturyFascists Author:Robert Hass
“I think that poets can say, "What we want is for everybody on earth to wake up free from fear and with access to medicine and clean water and education." But I don't think poets have any special insight on how to get there. And the 20th century is a pretty good record of that because so many of the great poets were Stalinists: Vallejo, Neruda, Eluard, Aragon, etc. They wrote their odes to Lenin and Stalin. They glorified some of the most violent and grotesque dictatorships of the 20th century. And a lot of the ones who were not Stalinists were fascists or fascist sympathizers.” ThinkingWantEarthWaterRecordsSpecialCenturyPoetWake UpMedicineCleanInsightAccessViolentEtcDictatorship20th CenturyFascistsGrotesqueGreat PoetClean WaterOdesGood RecordsLenin And Stalin Author:Robert Hass
“It's difficult not to color our perception of author's product with his personality. There are so many examples of this. What do we think of Ezra Pound - clearly a great poet and clearly kind of an asshole? You can say the same thing about Louis-Ferdinand Céline, who clearly was a Nazi sympathizer, and yet one of the great writers of the 20th century. It is tough, but there are enough examples around where we have to somehow find a way of separating the work from the artist and seeing what there is to see in the work, while also condemning the thoughts we see in the man.” ThinkingMenKindEnoughArtistDifficultHe ManPoetPersonalityPerceptionToughNazi20th CenturyGreat WritersGreat Poet Author:Salman Rushdie