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Poet Quotes

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Poet Quotes

“You admire, Vacerra, only the poets of old and praise only those who are dead. Pardon me, I beseech you, Vacerra, if I think death too high a price to pay for your praise.”

Ifs Thinking Pay Poet Praise Admire Pardon Pardon Me

Book:The Epigrams of Martial

Source: The Epigrams of Martial

“All poets pretend to write for immortality, but the whole tribe have no objection to present pay, and present praise. Lord Burleigh is not the only statesman who has thought one hundred pounds too much for a song, though sung by Spenser; although Oliver Goldsmith is the only poet who ever considered himself to have been overpaid.”

Writing Has Beens Whole Song Pay Lord Too Much Poet Hundred Praise Immortality Pounds Tribes Statesmen Objections Spenser

Book:Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think

Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think

“I tell poets that when a line just floats into your head, don't pay attention 'cause it probably has floated into somebody else's head.”

Poetry Causes Lines Pay Attention Poet Pay Attention Floats

Author:Gwendolyn Brooks

“What it 't to us, if taxes rise or fall, Thanks to our fortune, we pay none at all. Let muckworms who in dirty acres deal, Lament those hardships which we cannot feel, His grace who smarts, may bellow if he please, But must I bellow too, who sit at ease? By custom safe, the poets' numbers flow, Free as the light and air some years ago. No statesman e'er will find it worth his pains To tax our labours, and excise our brains. Burthens like these with earthly buildings bear, No tributes laid on castles in the air.”

Source: Poetical Works: With a Memoir by James L. Hannay and Copious Notes by W. Tooke

“The fine gifts of temperament and imagination which are essential to the production of true poetry are often accompanied by morbid sensibility. The soul capable of ecstasy and transport must pay its price in suffering; he who walks upon the heights must sometimes grovel in the dust.”

Soul Sometimes Suffering Imagination Walks Pay Poet Fine Essentials Capable Productions Dust Height Ecstasy Sensibility Temperament Transport Morbid

Author:Myrtle Reed

“[To become a poet] The most important thing is to pay attention. The next would probably be to read; it's so important to pay attention. It keeps you from being bored, and I might add it keeps you from being boorish.”

Important Might Next Pay Attention Poet Important Things Add Pay Attention Bored Being Bored

Author:Nikki Giovanni

“I grow very impatient with prose writers who don't pay attention to the cadence of the sentence. If you start as a poet, you're wooed by the music of language; you want to put that into your practice.”

Ifs Want Language Grows Pay Attention Practice Poet Sentences Pay Attention Prose Impatient Cadence

Author:Alison Hawthorne Deming

“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.”

Way Kind My Own Pay Poet Tables Bread Contemporary Translate Translations Sidelines French Poetry

Author:Paul Auster

“When I taught at the University of Houston in the Creative Writing program we required the poets to take workshops in fiction writing and we required the fiction writers to take workshops in poetry. And the reason for that is because the fiction writers seemed to need to learn how to pay greater attention to language itself, to the way that language works.”

Way Needs Writing Reason Language Pay Attention Fiction Creative Greater Taught Poet Program University Creative Writing Workshops Fiction Writing Fiction Writers Houston

Author:Edward Hirsch

“The poets needed to learn to pay greater attention to character and to narrative.”

Character Pay Attention Greater Poet Needed Narrative

Author:Edward Hirsch

“Everyone wants to be open and inclusive, but nobody wants to pay for it. It's the biggest roadblock to translating living writers, especially poets.”

Want Pay Poet Translate Roadblock

Author:Andre Naffis-Sahely

“Often poets fall into groups that exclude others, and don't pay attention to those who write in different ways. It seems so limited to me.”

Way Writing Different Seems Fall Pay Attention Groups Poet Pay Attention Different Ways

Author:Martha Ronk