“Ego cannot bring anything extraordinary into the world; the extraordinary comes only through egolessness. And so is the case with the musician and the poet and the dancer. So is the case with everybody.” WorldCasesPoetEgoMusicianExtraordinaryDancer Author:Rajneesh
“Every dude in your high school wasn't striving to be the best poet because then he'd get all the girls, right? But you could imagine a society in which that were the case.” SchoolGirlCasesImaginePoetHigh SchoolStriveBeing The BestStriving To Be The BestBest Poet Author:Chad Harbach
“Isn't it curious how one has only to open a book of verse to realise immediately that it was written by a very fine poet, or else that it was written by someone who is not a poet at all. In the case of the former, the lines, the images, though they are inherent in each other, leap up and give one this shock of delight. In the case of the latter, they lie flat on the page, never having lived.” GivingBookLyingPoetryLinesCasesWrittenPoetFinePagesDelightCuriousFormerShockLatterFlatsLeapRealisingInherentVerses Author:Edith Sitwell
“Chloe Honum's brilliant first book The Tulip-Flame traces an identity forming within radically divergent but interlocking systems: a family traumatized by the mother's suicide, a failed relationship, the practice of ballet, a garden-each strict, exacting. And with 'a crow's sky-knowing mind,' Honum in every case transfigures emotion by way of elegant language and formal restraint. Chloe Honum is 'one astounding flame' of a poet, and I predict a long-lasting one.” WayMindFirstsLongBookMotherLanguageEmotionPracticeCasesKnowingSkyIdentityPoetGardenSuicideBrilliantFlamesLastingBalletFormalStrictRestraintElegantCrowDivergentChloeLong LastingFailed Relationship Author:Claudia Emerson
“If it really was Queen Elizabeth who demanded to see Falstaff in a comedy, then she showed herself a very perceptive critic. But even in The Merry Wives of Windsor, Falstaff has not and could not have found his true home because Shakespeare was only a poet. For that he was to wait nearly two hundred years till Verdi wrote his last opera. Falstaff is not the only case of a character whose true home is the world of music; others are Tristan, Isolde and Don Giovanni.” IfsWorldYearsTwoCharacterHomeLastsFoundWaitingCasesComedyWifePoetHundredCriticsQueensOperaMerryQueen ElizabethTrue HomeWindsorFalstaffVerdi Author:W. H. Auden
“The definition of good prose is proper words in their proper places; of good verse, the most proper words in their proper places.The propriety is in either case relative. The words in prose ought to express the intended meaning, and no more; if they attract attention to themselves, it is, in general, a fault.” IfsPoetryAttentionCasesPoetOughtFaultsDefinitionsProseRelativeVersesPropriety Book:Specimens of the Table Talk of the Late Samuel Taylor Coleridge: In Two Volumes Source: Specimens of the Table Talk of the Late Samuel Taylor Coleridge: In Two Volumes
“In case I conk out, this is provisionally what I have to do: I must clarify obscurities; I must make clearer definite ideas or dissociations. I must find a verbal formula to combat the rise of brutality--the principle of order versus the split atom.” IdeasPoetryOrderPrinciplesCasesPoetRoseFormulasCombatAtomsSplitsDefiniteVersusBrutalityObscurityDissociation Author:Ezra Pound
“The poet who writes "free" verse is like Robinson Crusoe on his desert island: he must do all his cooking, laundry and darning for himself. In a few exceptional cases, this manly independence produces something original and impressive, but more often the result is squalor - dirty sheets on the unmade bed and empty bottles on the unswept floor.” WritingResultsCasesProducePoetBedEmptyOriginalsIndependenceCookingDesertDirtyIslandsBottlesVersesSheetsExceptionalImpressiveManlyLaundryFree VerseSqualorRobinson CrusoeEmpty BottlesUnmade Beds Author:W. H. Auden
“Everyone is a poet at 16, but how many are poets at 50? Generally, people seem to get more conservative as they age, but in my case, I seem to have gotten more radical.” PeopleSeemsAgeCasesPoetConservativeRadical Author:Fidel Castro
“I'm primarily a poet, so I'd have to say in my case I'd investigate the mystery in poetry in a different way than prose might investigate it, in a way that includes the power of the music of language and maybe more imaginatively in poetry, but I don't really know about better or worse. I guess it depends on the writer.” KnowsWayDifferentMightLanguageCasesMysteryPoetDependsDifferent WaysProse Author:Pattiann Rogers
“Productivity is a relative matter. And it's really insignificant: What is ultimately important is a writer's strongest books. It may be the case that we all must write many books in order to achieve a few lasting ones - just as a young writer or poet might have to write hundreds of poems before writing his first significant one.” WritingFirstsMayImportantBookMatterMightYoungOrderCasesAchievePoetProductivitySignificantLastingStrongestRelativeInsignificantYoung Writers Book:Conversations with Joyce Carol Oates Source: Conversations with Joyce Carol Oates
“There is something about a poet which leads us to believe that he died, in many cases, as long as 20 years before his birth.” YearsBelieveLongCasesComedyPoetBirthDied Author:James Thurber