“The idea of how to read a poem is based on the idea that poetry needs you as a reader. That the experience of poetry, the meaning in poetry is a kind of circuit that takes place between a poet, a poem and a reader and that meaning doesn't exist or in here in poems alone.” NeedsKindIdeasPoetReaderPoetry IsNeed YouCircuits Author:Edward Hirsch
“In American tradition a certain kind of, I would say, desperate American friendliness in which the poet tries to reach out through the page to make a connection by the side of the road with some other person.” TryingKindPersonsCertainSidesPoetPagesTraditionConnectionsDesperateReach OutFriendlinessAmerican Tradition Author:Edward Hirsch
“I like to mix it up, because the kind of comments you can get from a fiction writer about your poetry are going to be very different than what you'll get from a poet.” KindDifferentFictionPoetCommentFiction Writers Author:Sandra Cisneros
“I think we've come to a kind of splinter period in poetry. These tiny little bright fragments of observation - and not produced under sufficient pressure - some of it's very skillful, but I don't think there's anywhere a discernible major poet in the process of emerging; or if he is, I ain't seen him.” IfsThinkingKindLittlesProcessPoetPeriodsMajorsPressureTinyObservationSufficientFragmentsEmergingSkillfulSplinters Author:Conrad Aiken
“I know that in some ways I operate from a kind of antiquated interest in imagery, while many contemporary poets are not so interested in imagery. I think part of it is my training, and just my visual sense of things.” ThinkingKnowsWayKindInterestPoetTrainingContemporaryVisualsImagery Author:Martha Ronk
“I had this idea for a long time to make a film about a poet in Paterson named Patterson. I wanted him to be working class. Eventually I thought a bus was a perfect visual way to move him, to drift him through the city, to have a measured kind of routine lifestyle. And all these things kind of congealed into the film "Paterson" eventually.” WayKindLongIdeasWantedFilmMovingPerfectCitiesClassPoetLong TimeLifestyleVisualsRoutineBusWorking Class Author:Jim Jarmusch
“When I have a writing workshop, I like to have people that are anthropologists and people who are poking around in other fields, I like to have them all in the same workshop, and not worry about genre. I like to mix it up, because the kind of comments you can get from a fiction writer about your poetry are going to be very different than what you'll get from a poet. Or the comments you'll get from a filmmaker about your performance are going to be very different. My writing workshop is about mixing it up, cross-pollinating, not only in genres but in occupations.” PeopleWritingKindDifferentFictionWorryFieldsPoetCrossesPerformancesGenreFilmmakerOccupationCommentMixingWorkshopsFiction WritersAnthropologistsWriting WorkshopMixing It Up Author:Sandra Cisneros
“Many are the noble words in which poets speak concerning the actions of men; but like yourself when speaking about Homer, they do not speak of them by any rules of art: they are simply inspired to utter that to which the Muse impels them, and that only; and when inspired, one of them will make dithyrambs, another hymns of praise, another choral strains, another epic or iambic verses- and he who is good at one is not good any other kind of verse: for not by art does the poet sing, but by power divine.” MenKindDoeArtActionSpeakDivinePoetLike YouPraiseInspiredNobleVersesMuseEpicStrainHymnsLike Yourself Book:Plato: The Complete Works including 31 Books (illustrated) Source: Plato: The Complete Works including 31 Books (illustrated)
“Red Dragon's my favorite of the books, because it is written with such a poet's ear. Whenever it gets really flowery and poetic and it's dialogue, chances are that's a Thomas Harris quote of some kind that's kind of been repurposed or reinterpreted or re-imagined somehow. That's where a lot of that poetry comes from.” KindBookChanceWrittenPoetRedEarsMy FavoriteDialogueDragonsPoeticGet RealChances Are Author:Bryan Fuller
“Fiction is in danger of becoming a kind of poetry. Only other poets read it. Only other fiction writers care about it.” KindCareFictionDangerPoetBecomingFiction Writers Author:John Updike
“I was an only child, a very late child, born to parents who were both 39 at the time, which was very late back then. That kind of confirmed my sense of being the center of the universe, which I guess every child feels - children and poets both tend to feel.” FeelsKindChildrenUniverseParentBornPoetLateOnly ChildCenter Of The Universe Author:Billy Collins
“I have kind of an almost religious feeling about poets. I usually refuse to meet them because I admire them so much. Except for Poe.” KindFeelingsReligiousPoetRefuseAdmire Author:Tony Kushner
“The formal stuff feels old and windy. Not to say you shouldn't know prosody. But it's a wonderful time for exploratory poetics. Contemporary poets are inventing all kinds of wild, complex shapes for poetry, as we see. It's a wonderful time, less ego-centered.” KnowsFeelsKindStuffWonderfulPoetShapesEgoComplexesContemporaryAll KindsFormalInventingWindyWonderful TimesProsody Author:Anne Waldman
“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
“I think that what I learned then, I didn't know I was learning. I just knew that I was very privileged to see somebody who was a writer, a great poet, and very smart-faced. Suddenly Pasolini becomes a director, so he has to invent cinema. It was like watching the invention of cinema. But I found out that Pasolini taught me a lot. It was, especially, the kind of respect that he had for reality. He had kind of epiphanies in his movies, like when a moment becomes full of grace, and it is like as if it was the most important moment in the life of a character.” ThinkingKindImportantMomentsCharacterRealityGracePoetInventionEpiphanyVery SmartGreat Poet Author:Bernardo Bertolucci
“I think, as poets, we are in the odd position of constantly defending our art form. Which is funny and also sort of invigorating, too. No one really says, "Oh you're a lawyer? I've never understood the law. In fact, I kind of hate it." Or, "Oh you wait tables? I didn't know that was something people did." I say it can be invigorating because, on some level, we have to evaluate what we do and why we do it almost daily. We have to explain ourselves to people all the time. We have to say, "Yes, I am a unicorn, believe in me."” PeopleThinkingBelieveKindArtHateWaitingPoetLawyerOddBelieve In MeUnicorn Author:Ada Limon
“I've long believed that anybody who is in the act of remembering childhood is a poet, because you're thinking back on times when you were making false models of the universe. Everything is kind of irrational and poetic then.” ThinkingKindLongRememberUniverseChildhoodPoetPoeticIrrational Author:Guy Maddin
“I never felt like a Chinese citizen because I was pushed away at a very young age. My father, a writer, was a national enemy of the Communist Party. He was forbidden to write for 20 years. We literally lived underground. We dug a hole and lived there for years. My father cleaned public toilets, even though he was a highly respected poet. Nationality and borders are barriers to our intelligence, to our imagination and to all kinds of possibilities.” WritingKindAgeFatherImaginationPartyEnemyPossibilityPoetAll KindsChineseBarriersCommunistForbidden Author:Ai Weiwei
“One of the appeals of William Carlos Williams to me is that he was many different kinds of poet. He tried out many different forms in his own way of, more or less, formlessness. He was also a poet who could be - he was a love poet, he was a poet of the natural order and he was also a political poet.” KindDifferentPoliticalNaturalPoetDifferent Kinds Author:W. S. Di Piero
“Despite wanting to work in publishing, I was a publisher's worst nightmare: I rarely bought new books. So my goal was to publish the kind of books I would buy, and read. My reading habits have changed since starting the press. The only other "goal", per say, is to continue to experiment. I don't want the press to ever fall into a formula, or to be pigeonholed - "They do great reissues of modernist poets!" - I want to keep pushing, exploring the kind of title we can get away with. And working with authors who challenge the way I think about writing, editing and reading.” ThinkingWritingKindBookFallReadingGoalChallengesWorstChangedPoetHabitNightmareGet AwayPublishingExploringPublishReading Habits Author:Andrew Latimer
“I love to publish new writers, and we do so consistently. But a lot of contemporary American poets sound alike to me. They want to bring spoken, prosy language into poetry and I understand that desire. But they don't edit. It's not very curated work. It seems very lackluster, very uncareful. It may be the un-carefulness is also something they intend but there's a kind of "So what?" quality to a lot of it.” KindDesireLanguageQualityPoetConsistentlyPublish Author:Jonathan W. Galassi
“I'm old-fashioned enough to really still believe that the poem is an object to be memorized, venerated... I still believe in that kind of poem. A lot of poets today don't, they want to get away from the poem as object. They want something looser. Unfortunately, a lot of it is boring to me.” BelieveKindEnoughTodayPoetBoringGet AwayI Still Believe Author:Jonathan W. Galassi
“Social media's currency is the single photograph. Whereas, every time I look at a photograph, I look at twenty or thirty photographs. I'm looking for a narrative. And that's a different kind of construct. If you're a poet and you put a line from your poem online, "The trees bending over gracefully," or something, you can get a tick. But that has nothing to do with your longer poem.” KindDifferentTreePoetPhotographSocial MediaOnlineDifferent KindsCurrency Author:Stuart Franklin
“I consider myself kind of a reporter - one who uses words that are more like music and that have a choreography. I never think of myself as a poet; I just get up and write.” ThinkingWritingKindUsePoetGet UpReportersChoreography Author:Mary Oliver
“I worked privately, and sometimes I feel that might be better for poets than the kind of social workshop gathering. My school was the great poets: I read, and I read, and I read.” FeelsKindSometimesMightSchoolSocialPoetGatheringWorkshopsGreat Poet Author:Mary Oliver