“My advice to aspiring poets is to find a community of other poets who are willing to read one another's work. And to read widely, in a variety of time periods and cultures, to identify which traits of poems are appealing and which aversive. And what can be stolen.” CultureCommunityAdviceWillingPoetPeriodsVarietyTraitsStolenTime Periods Author:Lucia Perillo
“.. to a poet, the human community is like the community of birds to a bird, singing to each other. Love is one of the reasons we are singing to one another, love of language itself, love of sound, love of singing itself, and love of the other birds.” HumansReasonLanguageSoundCommunityLove IsPoetSelf LoveSingingBirdAnd Love Author:Sharon Olds
“Modern storytellers are the descendants of an immense and ancient community of holy people, troubadours, bards, griots, cantadoras, cantors, traveling poets, bums, hags and crazy people.” PeopleCommunityCrazyModernPoetHolyAncientImmenseStorytellerDescendantsCrazy PeopleBardsTroubadours Author:Clarissa Pinkola Estes
“Whether the poet is living or dead, they're part of our imaginative community.” CommunityPoetImaginative Author:Joan Larkin
“My mother actually left American in 1929 to be part of an alternative community of bohemians around her then father-in-law who was a well-known Greek poet. This group of people were living in this semi-Luddite reality and weaving their own clothes - proto-hippies in a way- -but around an artistic vision.” PeopleWayWellsRealityLawMotherFatherLeftCommunityKnownVisionGroupsPoetClothesArtisticAlternativesGreekWell KnownHippieIn-lawsWeavingArtistic VisionFather In Law Author:Anne Waldman
“I love when I meet generous poets, and generous meaning nice people, who give to the poetry community, who do interviews, read other people's books, and talk about them, spread the...love, I guess. That means a lot to me.” PeopleGivingMeanBookCommunityNicePoetSpreadGenerousInterviewsNice People Author:Victoria Chang
“The music community in Minneapolis is really incestuous so I've gotten the chance to work with a gang of people who have worked with Prince, Mint Condition, got to spend some time with Mujah Messiah, Atmosphere, P.O.S., Rhymesayers, a lot of poets around there.” PeopleCommunityChanceConditionsPoetAtmosphereGangMessiahMintMinneapolis Author:Nikki Jean
“As poet laureate, I was asked to be a spokesman for literature. Then what I decided is I am a spokesman for this other imagination of community - not the one showing up in the market. Nobody was tending to the way we're imaginatively connected to each other.” WayLiteratureCommunityImaginationPoetDecidedConnectedShowing Up Author:Robert Hass
“I am particularly conscious of my connection to the poets of the Harlem Renaissance because I, too, am a Black poet, born into, and shaped by, the very community in which those poets of the past produced so much of the work we associate with the Harlem Renaissance. We speak from the same place, both literally and metaphorically.” PastSpeakBlackBornCommunityPoetConsciousConnectionsAssociatesRenaissanceHarlemHarlem Renaissance Author:Nikki Grimes
“Social media is alluring, tempting, frustrating, etc. We mistake our interactions in social media as community, but is community possible when you don't even know what someone looks like or what his or her voice sounds like? I've enjoyed connecting with a lot of poets through social media, but do I truly know them if I haven't even met them yet?” IfsKnowsLooksSocialSoundVoiceCommunityMistakeMediaHavensPoetMetsSocial MediaEnjoyedEtcInteractionFrustratingConnectingTemptingAlluring Author:Allison Joseph
“Every poet gets to choose what kind of community he or she serves with the poems, and it's true that there is a community for very difficult, challenging poetry. It's a community that's established itself over the last 80 years, that was originally, in effect, really started by T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. They believed that poetry ought to contain learning, that it ought to rise upon all the learning that went before.” KindDifficultCommunityChallengesPoetEliot Author:Ted Kooser
“There's always been what I would call the William Carlos Williams strain, in which poems of simplicity and clarity are valued by a different community. I was talking to Galway Kinnell one day, and he said that there was an audience for poetry up until about 1920 and then, from that point on, the poets and the critics drifted.” DifferentCommunityAudiencePoetOne DayCriticsSimplicityClarity Author:Ted Kooser
“I personally believe the role of poets as poets (which is something different from our obligations as citizens, community members, humans) is to write poems. I believe this because I am quite sure poetry can do something no other form or writing, or human activity, can, at least not in such a powerful and distilled and undeniable way. And that we need this type of thinking for our survival as individuals and as a species.” ThinkingWritingBelieveDifferentIndividualI BelieveCommunityPowerfulPoetSurvivalObligation Author:Matthew Zapruder
“I think it is our job as poets to refuse the terms that society so often sets for usefulness. That, for instance, is what Dickinson did: she refused to be a wife, a homemaker, a standard member of her community. She knew she had to in order to have the space and time to write her poems. Thank god she said no!” ThinkingWritingTermCommunityWifePoetThank GodTime And SpaceUsefulnessHomemaker Author:Matthew Zapruder
“I tend to like the way poets form communities. Writing can be lonely after all. Modern life can be lonely. Poets do seem to be more social than fiction writers. This could be because of poetry's roots in the oral tradition - poetry is read aloud and even performed. I'm just speculating, of course. At any rate, because poets form these groups, they learn from one another. That is one of the best things about being a poet.” WritingCommunityModernPoetTraditionLonelyRatePoetry Is Author:Rae Armantrout
“Once you have an innovation culture, even those who are not scientists or engineers - poets, actors, journalists - they, as communities, embrace the meaning of what it is to be scientifically literate. They embrace the concept of an innovation culture. They vote in ways that promote it. They don't fight science and they don't fight technology.” WayCultureFightingActorsCommunityTechnologyPoetConceptsVoteScientistInnovationEmbraceJournalistEngineers Author:Neil deGrasse Tyson