“In the Middle Ages, the troubadour poets invented the concept of courtly love--a fantasy love, a noble passion, which was also extra-marital and thus inevitably thwarted, illicit, adulterous. One of the medieval terms for it was amour honestus (honest love). I've always wondered why this passionate ideal--masochistic, spiritual-travelled with such wildfire throughout Europe. My poem, a ghazal, takes up the subject.” AgeSpiritualPassionTermFantasyMiddleSubjectsHonestPoetConceptsEuropeIdealsPassionateNobleExtrasMiddle AgesMedievalAmourWildfiresMasochisticTroubadoursFantasy LoveHonest Love Author:Edward Hirsch
“Too many poets act like a middle-aged mother trying to get her kids to eat too much cooked meat, and potatoes with drippings (tears). I don't give a damn whether they eat or not. Forced feeding leads to excessive thinness (effete). Nobody should experience anything they don't need to, if they don't need poetry bully for them. I like the movies too. And after all, only Whitman and Crane and Williams, of the American poets, are better than the movies.” IfsNeedsGivingShouldTryingKidsMotherToo MuchMiddleTearsPoetDamnMeatFeedingBullyPotatoesMiddle AgedDrippingDon't Give A DamnCranesI Don't Give A DamnThinnessMeat And Potatoes Author:Frank O'Hara
“Like many modern poets, I tend to conceal rhymes by placing them in the middle of lines, and to avoid immediate alliteration and assonance in favor of echoes placed later in the poems.” LinesModernMiddlePoetFavorsEchoesRhymeAlliterationAssonance Book:Waltzing Again: New and Selected Conversations with Margaret Atwood Source: Waltzing Again: New and Selected Conversations with Margaret Atwood
“I wonder how long this word will last, governed exclusively by the merciless, inhuman and immoral criteria of global economy. Seeing the shadow of distant islands, I imagined one still inhabited by a tribe of poets set aside for when, after the middle age of materialism, humanity will have to start to put other values into his existence.” LongStillsAgeLastsValuesHumanityExistenceWonderEconomySeeingMiddlePoetShadowIslandsMaterialismTribesImmoralMiddle AgesCriteriaInhumanGlobal Economy Author:Tiziano Terzani
“In the 1970s, for example, I found myself learning to relish the poetry of Andrew Marvell and Sir Thomas Wyatt, and getting a handle on poetry of plainer speech than I had dwelt with heretofore. Which led me into a new appreciation of middle [William Butler ] Yeats, of the short three-beat line and forward-driving syntax, and that paid in, in turn, to a poem like Casualty in Field Work. The traffic, however, was usually the other way. My teaching was animated by what I was reading and being excited by as a poet.” WayTurnsThreeReadingFoundLinesTeachingMiddleExampleFieldsPoetSpeechBeatsPaidAppreciationExcitedDrivingHandleTrafficAnimatedRelishCasualtiesAndrewButlersSyntaxYeats Author:Adam Kirsch
“I think we all recognize that one of the problems in American culture is that increasingly, there's no middle ground. That either you're a celebrity writer or a celebrity poet, or else you're nothing.” ThinkingProblemCultureMiddlePoetAmerican CultureMiddle Ground Author:Frederic Tuten