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Poet Quotes

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Poet Quotes

“Joy is a part of my process. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that poetry, as a practice, necessitates a sense of joy. It's exhilarating to come into contact with the things we write into being. And a real sense of play and abandon even when we are relying on hard-won technique, and even when the aim is deadly serious. How often do we get the excuse to stop, think, and then stop thinking altogether and try to listen to what sits behind our outside of our thoughts? Poets are lucky.”

Thinking Writing Trying Real Hard Play Facts Joy Poetry Process Behinds Practice Serious Poet Lucky Aim Excuse Technique Contact Abandon Our Thoughts Exhilarating

Author:Tracy K. Smith

“On every full moon, rituals ... take place on hilltops, beaches, in open fields and in ordinary houses. Writers, teachers, nurses, computer programmers, artists, lawyers, poets, plumbers, and auto mechanics -- women and men from many backgrounds come together to celebrate the mysteries of the Triple Goddess of the Dance of Life. The religion they practice is called Witchcraft.”

Source: Spiral Dance: Slipcase

“Nobody is publicly accepted as an expert on poetry unless he displays the sign of poet, mathematician, etc., but universal men want no sign and make hardly any distinction between the crafts of poet and embroiderer. Universal men are not called poets or mathematicians, etc. But they are all these things and judges of them too. No one could guess what they are, and they will talk about whatever was being talked about when they came in. One quality is not more noticeable in them than another, unless it becomes necessary to put it into practice, and then we remember it.”

Men Want Remember Quality Practice Poet Judging Universal Accepted Crafts Experts Distinction Etc Display Mathematician

Author:Blaise Pascal

“Once considered an art form that called for talent, or at least a craft that called for practice, a poem now needs only sincerity. Everyone, we're assured, is a poet. Writing poetry is good for us. It expresses our inmost feelings, which is wholesome. Reading other people's poems is pointless since those aren't our own inmost feelings.”

People Needs Writing Art Feelings Form Reading Practice Talent Poet Crafts Poetry Is Sincerity Assured Pointless Writing Poetry

Book:Wasn't the Grass Greener?: A Curmudgeon's Fond Memories

Source: Wasn't the Grass Greener?: A Curmudgeon's Fond Memories

“Chloe Honum's brilliant first book The Tulip-Flame traces an identity forming within radically divergent but interlocking systems: a family traumatized by the mother's suicide, a failed relationship, the practice of ballet, a garden-each strict, exacting. And with 'a crow's sky-knowing mind,' Honum in every case transfigures emotion by way of elegant language and formal restraint. Chloe Honum is 'one astounding flame' of a poet, and I predict a long-lasting one.”

“Just because science can't in practice explain things like the love that motivates a poet to write a sonnet, that doesn't mean that religion can. It's a simple and logical fallacy to say, "If science can't do something therefore religion can.”

Ifs Writing Mean Simple Practice Poet Logical Sonnet Fallacy Logical Fallacy

Author:Richard Dawkins

“This capacity for oversignifying, for reading in, is precisely what poets tap into, both in their own practice and in the poem the give to the reader; and in doing so they turn language against its own project of conceptual division, and use it to heal itself - and in the process - paradoxically - to articulate new concepts that it can't yet accommodate.”

Giving Use Poetry Turns Reading Literature Language Process Practice Poet Reader Projects Concepts Capacity Heal Division Accommodate Heal Itself

Author:Don Paterson

“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

“Young poets are advised by their elders to avoid the practice of journalism as they would wet socks and gin before breakfast.”

Young Practice Poet Journalism Breakfast Wet Elders Sock Gin

Author:Archibald MacLeish

“The novel may be dead as a commercial form. When art forms things die as commercial forms, something happens to the practice of those arts that isn't very pleasant. It used to be that a poet like Tennyson could keep his house and his coach-and-four and his staff of six servants on the income from poetry. That doesn't happen anymore.”

May Art Happens Form Used Dies House Practice Novel Four Poet Six Coaches Things Happen Income Used To Be Servant Pleasant Staff Tennyson

Author:William Monahan

“I had to learn that slower is faster. If you practice every day with patience and correctness, you will get there. It's like preparing for a jump. You can't rush. You must summon the appropriate energy with split-second timing and have an understanding of purpose to get up in the air. It requires training, confidence and mental effort. You can't have a vocabulary without the alphabet. Balanchine used to say, "Do you want to be a poet of gesture or do you want to be a physical entity?"”

Ifs Want Used Purpose Energy Understanding Effort Practice Air Poet Training Get Up Faster Appropriate Gestures Splits Timing Entity Preparing Vocabulary Correctness Alphabet Up In The Air

Author:Edward Villella

“I'm a poet who practices Zen. And it's not, I'm somebody who practices Zen who writes poetry. There's no separation for me.”

Writing Practice Poet Separation

Author:Sam Hamill