“I think that that's why artists make art - it is difficult to put into words unless you are a poet. What it takes is being open to the flow of universal creativity. The Zen artists knew this.” ThinkingArtArtistDifficultCreativityPoetFlowUniversal Author:Alex Grey
“According to man's environment, society has made as many different types of men as there are varieties in zoology. The differences between a soldier, a workman, a statesman, a tradesman, a sailor, a poet, a pauper and a priest, are more difficult to seize, but quite considerable as the differences between a wolf, a lion, an ass, a crow, a sea-calf, a sheep, and so on.” MenMadeDifferentDifficultDifferencesEnvironmentSeaSocietyPoetTypeSoldierAssVarietyPriestsLionsSheepSailorCrowStatesmenWorkmenCalvesZoology Author:Honore de Balzac
“if you think it so easy to be a critic, so difficult to be a poet or a painter or film experimenter, may I suggest you try both? You may discover why there are so few critics, so many poets.” IfsThinkingTryingMayFilmEasyDifficultPoetCriticsPainter Book:For Keeps Source: For Keeps
“The reason modern poetry is difficult is so that the poet's wife cannot understand it.” ReasonPoetryDifficultWifeModernPoetPoetry IsModern Poetry Author:Wendy Cope
“Poets think in short lines. Unless you're Samuel Beckett, Twitter might be more difficult for novelists.” ThinkingMightDifficultLinesPoetNovelistsBeckett Author:Kenneth Goldsmith
“As for what I have done as a poet, I take no pride in whatever. Excellent poets have lived at the same time with me, poets more excellent lived before me, and others will come after me. But that in my country I am the only person who knows the truth in the difficult science of colors-of that, I say, I am not a little proud, and here have a consciousness of superiority to many.” KnowsLittlesPersonsCountryDoneDifficultConsciousnessColorPoetPrideProudExcellentSuperiority Author:Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“I don't believe a good poet is very often deliberately obscure. A poet writes in a way necessary to him or her; the reader may then find the poem difficult.” WayWritingBelieveMayDifficultPoetReaderDon't BelieveObscure Author:Lydia Davis
“Ordinary life was laced with miracles, I knew that, had read enough poetry to understand that we are elevated with the knowing, and yet it was difficult to notice and be grateful when one was continually fatigued and irritated. I suppose that unquenchable sense of wonder is what separates us dolts from the saints and the poets.” EnoughDifficultWonderKnowingPoetOrdinaryMiracleGratefulSaintBe GratefulOrdinary LifeIrritatedSense Of Wonder Author:Jane Hamilton
“Poetry is difficult, I mean interesting poetry, not confessional babble or emotive propaganda. Reading a new poet is discovering an entire world, what Stevens called a 'mundo' and it takes a lot of time to orientate oneself in such a world. What we have to learn to do then, as teachers and militants of a poetic insurgency, is to encourage people to learn to love the difficulty of poetry. I simply do not understand much of the poetry that I love.” PeopleWorldMeanReadingDifficultInterestingTeacherPoetDifficultyOneselfPropagandaPoetry IsPoeticDiscoveringInsurgency Author:Simon Critchley
“Walking companions, like heroes, are difficult to pluck out of the crowd of acquaintances. Good dispositions, ready wit, friendly conversation serve well enough by the fireside but they prove insufficient in the field. For there you need transcendentalists-nothing less; you need poets, sages, humorists and natural philosophers.” NeedsWellsEnoughDifficultNaturalFieldsReadyPoetHeroWalkingConversationProvePhilosopherCrowdsWitFriendlyCompanionDispositionSageAcquaintanceHumoristsPluckInsufficient Author:Brooks Atkinson
“Poets in our civilization, as it exists at present, must be difficult...The poet must become more and more comprehensive, more allusive, more indirect, in order to force, to dislocate if necessary, language into its meaning.” IfsOrderLanguageForceDifficultPoetCivilizationComprehensiveIndirect Author:T. S. Eliot
“At birth we begin to discover that shapes, sounds, lights, and textures have meaning. Long before we learn to talk, sounds and images form the world we live in. All our lives, that world is more immediate than words and difficult to articulate. Photography, reflecting those images with uncanny accuracy, evokes their associations and our instant conviction. The art of the photographer lies in using those connotations, as a poet uses the connotations of words and a musician the tonal connotations of sounds.” WorldLongArtUseLightFormLyingDifficultSoundOur LivesPoetBirthShapesPhotographyMusicianPhotographerConvictionInstantAssociationReflectingTextureAccuracyEvokeConnotationUncanny Author:Nancy Newhall
“Some difficulty is warranted and other difficulty I think is gratuitous. And I think I can tell the difference. There are certainly very difficult poets that I really enjoy reading.” ThinkingI CanReadingEnjoyDifficultDifferencesPoetDifficulty Author:Billy Collins
“I've always been more than a little mystified by poets who seem to think talking to people as directly as possible is a bad thing. I mean, I don't want to set up a straw man here: I understand that for many poets - and for me, at times - writing truly means writing in a way that is difficult, simply because the poem is trying to grasp for something elusive. So the difficulty of the poem is just unavoidable, and not in any way artificially imposed. So "as possible" is the key part of the phrase above, I suppose.” PeopleThinkingMenWayWantWritingTryingMeanLittlesSeemsDifficultTalkingPoetKeysDifficultyPhrasesBad ThingsElusiveStraws Author:Matthew Zapruder
“It's difficult to put your own bare ass out on the limb every time you sit down to write a poem. But that's really sort of the ideal. Because if we don't discover something about ourselves and our world in the making of a poem, chances are it's not going to be a very good poem. So what I'm saying is that a lot of our best poets could be better poets if they wrote less and risked more in what they do.” IfsWorldWritingDifficultChancePoetIdealsVery GoodAssOur WorldLimbsChances AreBest Poet Author:Sam Hamill
“I hope I'm not implying role of contemporary poet for myself, although there's a kind of resonant paradigm. It's traditionally a difficult role.” KindDifficultRolesPoetContemporaryParadigmImplying Author:Anne Waldman
“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
“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
“The poet's job is to put into words those feelings we all have that are so deep, so important, and yet so difficult to name, to tell the truth in such a beautiful way, that people cannot live without it.” PeopleWayImportantFeelingsTruthJobsBeautifulNamesDifficultPoetTelling The Truth Author:Jane Kenyon