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Poet Quotes

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Poet Quotes

“Perhaps no poet is a conscious plagiarist, but there seems to be warrant for suspecting that there is no poet who is not at one time or another an unconscious one.”

Writing Seems Poet Conscious Unconscious One Time Warrants

Book:Following the Equator:

Source: Following the Equator:

“Poets often have a conscious awareness that they are struggling with the daimonic, and that the issue is their working something through from the depths which push the self to a new plane.”

Self Struggle Issues Awareness Poet Conscious Depth Planes Conscious Awareness

Book:Love and will

Source: Love and will

“Once I started writing all the time and interacting with poets, I made a conscious decision to identify myself as a poet. It's funny how much a single word can provide focus and direction. As soon as I claimed that identity, I started clearing more and more space for poetry in my life and applying poetic tools to other areas of my life. The world became a different place, and I witnessed it through different kinds of eyes.”

World Writing Kind Made Different Eye Poetry Space Decision Focus Identity Poet Conscious Areas Tools Poetic Different Kinds Different Place Interacting Clearing Single Word

Author:Tracy K. Smith

“[The poet] is endowed to speak for those who do not have the gift of language, or to see for those who - for whatever reasons - are less conscious of what they are living through. It is as though the risks of the poet's existence can be put to some use beyond her own survival.”

Reason Use Speak Language Existence Risk Poet Survival Conscious

Author:Adrienne Rich

“My theory is that poems are written because of a state of emotional irritation. It may be present for some time before the poet is conscious of what is tormenting him. The emotional irritation springs, probably, from subconscious combinations of partly forgotten thoughts and feelings. Coming together, like electrical currents in a thunder storm, they produce a poem. ... the poem is written to free the poet from an emotional burden.”

Source: Mirror of the Heart: Poems of Sara Teasdale

“A really good stand-up comic is a poet; it's about the use of language. It can be really poetic. And I like politically conscious comedy.”

Use Language Comedy Poet Conscious Comic Poetic Use Of Language

Author:Sherman Alexie

“Where philosophy ends, poetry must commence. There should not be a common point of view, a natural manner of thinking which standsin contrast to art and liberal education, or mere living; that is, one should not conceive of a realm of crudeness beyond the boundaries of education. Every conscious link of an organism should not perceive its limits without a feeling for its unity in relation to the whole. For example, philosophy should not only be contrasted to non-philosophy, but also to poetry.”

“The poets who do this are uniquely conscious of this silence, this stillness.”

Silence Poet Conscious Stillness

Author:Russell Simmons

“The judges who awarded the 1980 Commonwealth Poetry Prize to my first collection of poems, Crossing the Peninsula and Other Poems, cited with approval and with no apparent conscious irony my early poem, "No Alarms." The poem was composed probably sometime in 1974 or 1975, and it complained about the impossibility of writing poetry - of being a poet - under the conditions in which I was living then.”

Writing Firsts Conditions Poet Judging Conscious Irony Collections Prize Approval Impossibility Alarms Crossings Commonwealth Writing Poetry Peninsulas

Author:Shirley Geok-lin Lim

“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.”

Past Speak Black Born Community Poet Conscious Connections Associates Renaissance Harlem Harlem Renaissance

Author:Nikki Grimes

“I think many poets, including myself, write both for the voice and for the page. I certainly write for the person alone in the library, who pulls down a book and it opens to a poem. I am also very conscious of what it means to read these poems aloud.”

Thinking Writing Mean Persons Book Voice Poet Pages Conscious Library Including

Author:Adrienne Rich