“It was among farmers and potato diggers and old men in workhouses and beggars at my own door that I found what was beyond these and yet farther beyond that drawingroom poet of my childhood in the expression of love, and grief, and the pain of parting, that are the disclosure of the individual soul.” MenSoulPainFoundIndividualMy OwnGriefDoorsChildhoodPoetExpressionOld ManFarmersPotatoesPartingBeggarDisclosureExpressions Of LoveWorkhouses Book:The Kiltartan Poetry Book Source: The Kiltartan Poetry Book
“If I were poet now, I would not resist the temptation to trace my life back through the delicate shadows of my childhood to the precious and sheltered sources of my earliest memories. But these possessions are far too dear and sacred for the person I now am to spoil for myself. All there is to say of my childhood is that it was good and happy. I was given the freedom to discover my own inclinations and talents, to fashion my inmost pleasures and sorrows myself and to regard the future not as an alien higher power but as the hope and product of my own strength.” IfsPersonsGivenMemoriesMy OwnPleasureChildhoodTalentFashionPoetProductsSourceHigherSorrowShadowRegardSacredDearPossessionTemptationAliensDelicateInclinationSpoilHigher Power Author:Hermann Hesse
“My own journey in becoming a poet began with memory - with the need to record and hold on to what was being lost. One of my earliest poems, Give and Take, was about my Aunt Sugar, how I was losing her to her memory loss.” NeedsGivingLostMemoriesMy OwnLossRecordsJourneyPoetBecomingLosingSugarAuntGive And TakeMemory LossLost OnesLosing Her Author:Natasha Trethewey
“My biggest poetic influences are probably 20th-century British and Irish poets. So I suppose I'm always listening for the music I associate with that poetry, the telling images, the brevity. I want to hear it in my own work as well as in the poetry I read. However, I think I'm generally more forgiving of other poets than myself.” ThinkingWantWellsMy OwnInfluenceCenturyPoetListeningForgivingBritishPoeticAssociates20th CenturyBrevity Author:David Starkey
“I prefer poems that occupy an imaginative sphere. When I lived in Cincinnati, I was occasionally referred to as an "Ohio Poet;" this made me uneasy, not only because I think of myself as a generally American poet but also because I like to think I write out of the country of my own mind.” ThinkingWritingMindMadeCountryMy OwnPoetSpheresImaginativeOhioUneasy Author:Cate Marvin
“I was always interested in French poetry sort of as a sideline to my own work, I was translating contemporary French poets. That kind of spilled out into translation as a way to earn money, pay for food and put bread on the table.” WayKindMy OwnPayPoetTablesBreadContemporaryTranslateTranslationsSidelinesFrench Poetry Author:Paul Auster
“What the world wants, what the world is waiting for, is not Modern Poetry or Classical Poetry or Neo-Classical Poetry - but Good Poetry. And the dreadful disreputable doubt, which stirs in my own skeptical mind, is doubt about whether it would really matter much what style a poet chose to write in, in any period, as long as he wrote Good poetry.” WorldWantWritingMindLongMatterWaitingMy OwnDoubtModernStylePoetPeriodsSkepticalModern PoetryGood Poetry Author:Gilbert K. Chesterton
“I wrote a number of poems about Kah Tai lagoon, when Safeway was building that huge, ugly store down there where I used to love to watch the birds nest. That political poem, or environmental poem, was unsuccessful because Safeway built there anyway. And yet the poem has something to say today, as it did then. And I speak here only of my own poems. The agenda for every poet has to be different because most of us write from direct human experience in the world.” WorldWritingHumansDifferentTodayPoliticalUsedSpeakMy OwnNumbersWatchesBuildingPoetHugeBirdBuiltDirectEnvironmentalUglyStoresAgendasHuman ExperienceNestsUnsuccessfulUsed To LoveLagoons Author:Sam Hamill
“If anything, hearing another poet is a sacred experience I enter, but I can honestly say this does not influence my own work.” IfsDoeI CanMy OwnInfluencePoetSacredHearingHonestly Author:Grace Cavalieri
“[I have] my own view about [Bob] Dylan's Nobel prize. Which is, I'm firmly in the Nay camp. I do think the award is a category error, but that's not why. Not in itself. What bothers me is the perceived status of the categories. If pop lyricists were routinely considered for the prize as are authors and poets, I'd still think it mistaken, but I wouldn't much care. But I am quite certain that Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen, for example, both at the very least Dylan's equals as writers, have never been in the running and never will be.” IfsThinkingStillsCareRunningCertainMy OwnViewsExamplePoetErrorsPopsBotherPrizeWhy NotAwardsCategoriesCampsBobMistakenDylanNobelNobel PrizeLyricists Author:David Bennun
“I make it clear why I write as I do and why other poets write as they do. After hundreds of experiments I decided to go my own way in style and see what would happen.” WayWritingHappensLiteratureMy OwnClearStylePoetDecidedExperiments Book:Ever the Winds of Chance Source: Ever the Winds of Chance
“The poet sees better than other mortals. I do not see things as they are, but according to my own subjective impression, and this makes life easier and simpler.” My OwnPoetEasierImpressionMortalsSubjective Book:The Letters of Robert Schumann Source: The Letters of Robert Schumann