Best poet & way Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings Page 2

“Why should all virtue work in one and the same way? Why should all give dollars? It is very inconvenient to us country folk, and we do not think any good will come of it. We have not dollars; merchants have; let them give them. Farmers will give corn; poets will sing; women will sew; laborers will lend a hand; the children will bring flowers.”

Source: The Spiritual Emerson: Essential Works by Ralph Waldo Emerson

“It's absurd and quite tragic the way people have managed to pit science against faith. They aren't in conflict at all - they're long lost dance partners. I don't divide the world up into Christians and other people - we are all human beings, brothers and sisters, and we embrace truth wherever we find it, whether that's in a lab, a field or a cathedral. Because sometimes you need a scientist and sometimes you need a poet.”

“I don't believe a good poet is very often deliberately obscure. A poet writes in a way necessary to him or her; the reader may then find the poem difficult.”

Way Writing Believe May Difficult Poet Reader Don't Believe Obscure

Author:Lydia Davis

“The way our big cities change sucks. The beauty of cities was that they were edgy, sometimes even a little dangerous. Artists, poets, and activists could come and unify and create different kinds of scenes. Not just fashion scenes, scenes that were politically active. Big cities are getting so high-end oriented, business corporate fashion, fashion not in an artistic sense but in a corporate sense. For me that edgy beauty of cities is lost, wherever you go.”

Way Kind Littles Different Ends Sometimes Bigs Artist Lost Cities Fashion Dangerous Poet Scene Active Artistic Corporate Activist Different Kinds Edgy Big Cities

Author:Patti Smith

“Living is the original art. As a young man I wanted to be a poet and I learned along the way that I already was a poet.”

Men Way Art Wanted Young Poet Originals Young Man Original Art

Author:Mark Nepo

“I'm not a poet. I'm not up onstage to get something off my chest. I'm making musical statements, or, most of the time, musical questions for people to figure out, and I'm not going to get in the way of that.”

People Way Figures Poet Musical Statements Chests

Author:Mike Patton

“My mother actually left American in 1929 to be part of an alternative community of bohemians around her then father-in-law who was a well-known Greek poet. This group of people were living in this semi-Luddite reality and weaving their own clothes - proto-hippies in a way- -but around an artistic vision.”

People Way Wells Reality Law Mother Father Left Community Known Vision Groups Poet Clothes Artistic Alternatives Greek Well Known Hippie In-laws Weaving Artistic Vision Father In Law

Author:Anne Waldman

“It was a little harder when I first went to Egypt when I was 18 years old and being a white woman with a knapsack and in blue jeans. But again I was part of the rucksack revolution there was some grace there. You could put it that way. And confidence as well because I thought of myself as a poet. That was part of it. I was going for that, to have experiences to make the work.”

Way Years Firsts Wells Littles White Grace Poet Revolution Harder Blue Egypt Jeans Blue Jeans

Author:Anne Waldman

“I'm not the kind of poet who arranges treasure-hunts to please the academics and keep them busy. Poetry should be surprising in deeper ways.”

Way Should Kind Poet Please Busy Deeper Treasure Surprising Hunts Treasure Hunt

Author:Michael Longley

“When you recite you're giving a performance, in the way that an actor or a singer performs, and some poets are not interested in doing that, maybe because they're writing for a readership as opposed to an audience, or because they see poetry as a very private art.”

Way Giving Writing Art Actors Audience Poet Performances Singers Not Interested Readership

Author:James Arthur

“For me, poetry is a way of thinking, and like many poets, I'm driven by the idea of trying to find the impossible, perfect words: the words that will hold my subject.”

Thinking Way Trying Ideas Perfect Impossible Subjects Poet Driven Poetry Is Way Of Thinking

Author:James Arthur

“Wine has been with us since the beginning of civilization. It is the temperate, civilized, sacred, romantic mealtime beverage recommended in the Bible. Wine has been praised for centuries by statesmen, philosophers, poets, and scholars. Wine in moderation is an integral part of our culture, heritage and gracious way of life.”

Way Has Beens Culture Century Poet Civilization Sacred Wine Philosopher Civilized Heritage Scholar Moderation Gracious Statesmen Beverages

Author:Robert Mondavi

“Poets are immersed in process, and I mean process not as an amorphous blur but as a discipline. The hard work of writing has taught me that in matters of the heart, such as writing, or faith, there is no right or wrong way to do it, but only the way of your life. Just paying attention will teach you what bears fruit and what doesn't. But it will be necessary to revise--to doodle, scratch out, erase, even make a mess of things--in order to make it come out right.”

Way Writing Heart Mean Matter Hard Order Process Attention Teach Taught Poet Hard Work Bears Discipline Fruit Mess Pay Attention Scratches Erase Wrong Way Blur Matters Of The Heart

Author:Kathleen Norris

“Corruption is subtle, just like the Bible said. Many young poets have come to me and asked, How am I gonna make it? They feel, and often with considerable justice, that they are being overlooked while others with less talent are out there making careers for themselves. I always give the same advice. I say, Do it the hard way, and you’ll always feel good about yourself. You write because you have to, and you get this unbelievable satisfaction from doing it well. Try to live on that as long as you’re able.”

Way Giving Feels Writing Trying Wells Long Said Hard Able Young Justice Careers Advice Talent Poet Satisfaction Corruption Feel Good Subtle About Yourself Unbelievable Overlooked Hard Way

Author:Philip Levine

“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

“There is this tendency to think that if you could only find the magic way, then you could become a poet. "Tell me how to become a poet. Tell me what to do." . . . What makes you a poet is a gift for language, an ability to see into the heart of things, and an ability to deal with important unconscious material. When all these things come together, you're a poet. But there isn't one little gimmick that makes you a poet. There isn't any formula for it.”

Ifs Thinking Way Heart Littles Important Together Language Ability Deals Magic Poet Materials Tendencies Unconscious Formulas Ability To See Gimmicks

Author:Erica Jong

“Do not ever read books about versification: no poet ever learnt it that way. If you are going to be a poet, it will come to you naturally and you will pick up all you need from reading poetry.”

Ifs Way Needs Book Reading Poet Picks Reading Poetry

Author:A. E. Housman

“Schoolchildren all over America are told to write to authors-often to authors whom they have never before heard of, whose work they are to young to understand in the least, and often in letters which are almost illiterate. If children are to be taught to respect the work of American poets I think some better way might be found to do so- some way which would not make such an inconsiderate demand on the author's time.”

Ifs Thinking Way Writing Children Might America Young Found Heard Taught Poet Demand Letters Better Ways Illiterate Inconsiderate

Author:Conrad Aiken

“The poet's first rule must be never to bore his readers; and his best way of keeping this rule is never to bore himself-which, of course, means to write only when he has something urgent to say.”

Way Writing Firsts Mean Courses Poet Reader Best Way Bores Urgent

Book:Collected writings on poetry

Source: Collected writings on poetry

“Wherein lies a poet's claim to originality? That he invents his incidents? No. That he was present when his episodes had their birth? No. That he was first to repeat them? No. None of these things has any value. He confers on them their only originality that has any value, and that is his way of telling them.”

Way Firsts Lying Values Poet Birth Claims Repeats Originality Episodes Incidents

Author:Mark Twain

“The logic of the poet - that is, the logic of language or the experience itself - develops the way a living organism grows: it spreads out towards what it loves, and is heliotropic, like a plant.”

Way Language Grows Poet Logic Plant Spread Organisms Living Organisms

Author:Thomas Merton

“A poet sees things in two ways: First, as a child who never saw it before, and Second, as a dying man who will never see it again.”

Men Way Firsts Children Two Saws Dying Poet Two Ways

Author:James A. Michener

“Putting Instagram into a different context is about rescuing it from the tyranny of now, taking it back from the muddy river that everyone is pouring things into. As a poet, as a thinker, as an artist, I believe there's another way to experience the world, and another way to experience time.It can't all just be public relations and branding; it's about making meaning with signs around you.”

World Way Believe Different Artist I Believe Poet Rivers Relation Tyranny Thinker Branding Another Way Instagram Pouring Public Relations Muddy

Author:Frances Stark

“One of my great surprises when I was in America was about twenty-five years ago in Harvard, hearing Randall Jarrell deliver a bitter attack on the way poets were neglected. Yet there were about two thousand people present, and he was being paid five hundred dollars for delivering this attack.”

People Way Years Two America Five Poet Thousand Hundred Years Ago Paid Twenties Dollars Surprise Hearing Bitter Five Years Neglected Harvard Twenty Five Delivering

Author:Stephen Spender

“A poet has to adapt himself, more or less consciously,to the demands of his vocation, and hence the peculiarities of poets and the condition of inspiration which many people have said is near to madness... The problem of creative writing is essentially one of concentration... a focusing of the attention in a special way.”

People Way Writing Said Problem Inspiration Attention Creative Special Conditions Poet Demand Madness Concentration Vocation Creative Writing

Author:Stephen Spender

“Without those forerunners, Jane Austen and the Brontes and George Eliot could no more have written than Shakespeare could have written without Marlowe, or Marlowe without Chaucer, or Chaucer without those forgotten poets who paved the ways and tamed the natural savagery of the tongue. For masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice.”

Source: A Room of One's Own

“Metaphor impinges on everything, allowing us - poets and non-poets alike - to experience and think about the world in fluid, unusual ways.”

Thinking World Way Poet Metaphor Allowing Unusual Fluid

Author:James Geary

“Poets use metaphors and symbolism to construct images. I construct my images in the same way, except that I am using a different form.”

Way Different Use Form Poet Metaphor Constructs Symbolism Using Me

Author:Shirin Neshat

“I love those moments on stage, on screen and in life when you dispense with language, when you sort of transcend it in a way, and certainly the experience of falling in love, I think, defies words, which is why poets, painters, musicians, actors have tried to describe that feeling, writers have just tried to put words to that.”

Thinking Way Moments Feelings Fall Actors Language Stage Poet Musician Falling In Love Screens Painter

Author:Cate Blanchett

“One of my favorite artists is Tom Waits, whom most people think of as a wonderful singer-songwriter and a great poet. I certainly think of him that way, but I also know him as a terrific actor. You know, that persona that he puts on when he's doing his music comes from being an actor, figuring out a persona.”

People Thinking Knows Way Artist Actors Waiting Wonderful Poet My Favorite Singers Toms Songwriters Terrific Persona Singer Songwriters Great Poet Favorite Artist

Author:Jeff Bridges

“Above all, we ask the poet to teach us a way of seeing.”

Way Asks Teach Seeing Poet

Book:Deep Play

Source: Deep Play

“I'm primarily a poet, so I'd have to say in my case I'd investigate the mystery in poetry in a different way than prose might investigate it, in a way that includes the power of the music of language and maybe more imaginatively in poetry, but I don't really know about better or worse. I guess it depends on the writer.”

Knows Way Different Might Language Cases Mystery Poet Depends Different Ways Prose

Author:Pattiann Rogers

“As a poet or a novelist or a painter, you are pushing yourself all the time, always looking for a new way to approach something, challenging yourself and never, never trying to write the same book twice.”

Way Writing Trying Book Challenges Poet Approach Painter Novelists Pushing New Ways Push Yourself Challenge Yourself

Book:Conversations with Paul Auster

Source: Conversations with Paul Auster

“I don't think that you can say by any stretch of the imagination that all Wisconsin or Brooklyn-based poets write in a particular way. Similar sensibilities can spring up next to each other in the flower bed, or across oceans.”

Thinking Way Writing Next Imagination Particular Poet Flower Bed Ocean Spring Sensibility Brooklyn Wisconsin

Author:Matthea Harvey

“There's this pet phrase about writing that is bandied around particularly in workshops about "finding your own voice as a poet", which I suppose means that you come out from under the direct influence of other poets and have perhaps found a way to combine those influences so that it appears to be your own voice.”

Way Writing Mean Found Voice Influence Poet Findings Direct Phrases Pet Workshops

Author:Billy Collins

“I started moving away from poets like Wallace Stevens and Hart Crane and started reading poets like, again, Karl Shapiro, Howard Nemerov, Philip Larkin, and the British poets who were imported through that important anthology put together by Alvarez - and those would include Thom Gunn and Ted Hughes. And I think these poets gave me assurance that there were other ways to write besides the rather involuted style of high modernism whose high priests were Pound, Eliot and Stevens, and Crane perhaps.”

Thinking Way Writing Important Together Moving Reading Style Poet British Pounds Priests Assurance Modernism Anthology Philip Moving Away Eliot Hart Cranes

Author:Billy Collins

“I'm a line-maker. I think that's what makes poets different from prose-writers. That's the main way. We think, not just in sentences the way prose writers do but also in lines. So we're doing these two things at the same time.”

Thinking Way Two Different Lines Poet Sentences Two Things Prose Makers

Author:Billy Collins

“I was at Yale and I said to the poet Elizabeth Alexander, "I'm interested in the ways in which black health seems precarious in the United States." She introduced me to the term "John Henryism." And then I went back and researched it and understood that, woah, this thing I am thinking about is actually a condition that's named.”

Thinking Way Said States Seems Black Term United United States Conditions Poet Understood Yale Precarious

Author:Claudia Rankine

“There are certainly times in history where power associates itself closely with fields that we would call the humanities, like rulers surrounding themselves with philosophers and poets, or playwrights. We do not live in that moment, and the best way to gauge the proximity of an academic field to power is by salary.”

Way Moments Humanity Fields Poet Philosopher Best Way That Moment Academic Rulers Associates Salary Playwright Proximity Gauges

Author:Elliott Colla

“That name, SUN BEAR, just sounds like an ideogram to me. Super resonant. By the way, this all might be related to Tomaž Šalamun's famous line, "Every true poet is a monster." Or why Richard Hugo writes that the imagination is a cynic. T”

Way Writing Might Names Sound Imagination Lines Sun Poet Bears Monsters Related Cynic Very True

Author:Matthew Zapruder

“That is a horrible thing in a way, but it is the one thing poets can bring back to experience, this intense focus on language, which activates words as a portal back into experience. It's a mysterious process that's very hard to articulate, because it's focused entirely on the material of language in a way, but in the interests not just of language itself whatever that would mean - that's the mistake, by the way, that so many so-called "experimental" poets make - but in service to human experience.”

Way Humans Mean Hard Language Process Interest Mistake Focus One Thing Poet Materials Focused Intense Horrible Mysterious Human Experience Portal Horrible Things Activate

Author:Matthew Zapruder

“I've always been more than a little mystified by poets who seem to think talking to people as directly as possible is a bad thing. I mean, I don't want to set up a straw man here: I understand that for many poets - and for me, at times - writing truly means writing in a way that is difficult, simply because the poem is trying to grasp for something elusive. So the difficulty of the poem is just unavoidable, and not in any way artificially imposed. So "as possible" is the key part of the phrase above, I suppose.”

People Thinking Men Way Want Writing Trying Mean Littles Seems Difficult Talking Poet Keys Difficulty Phrases Bad Things Elusive Straws

Author:Matthew Zapruder

“I'm more than a little suspicious of humor in poems, because I think it can at times be a way of getting a reaction out of a reader, or an audience, that is something closer to relief: i.e., thank god this isn't poetry, but stand-up comedy. Some poets are really funny, but more often poets are fourth rate stand up comics at best. But they benefit from the sheer relief of the audience.”

Thinking Way Littles Audience Comedy Poet Reader Benefits Rate Reactions Relief Thank God Fourth Sheer Suspicious Stand Up Comedy

Author:Matthew Zapruder

“I feel the most natural thing is for music to come that way because it's sort of like poetry. Though I do think with poets that I like, like Charles Olson or Ezra Pound, they were rewriting constantly, until the poem becomes a diamond.But with music I don't really feel that way.”

Thinking Way Feels Natural Poet Pounds Diamond Rewriting Natural Things

Author:Stephen Malkmus

“I was joking earlier when I said that all writers are manic depressives, but it's a joke with a lot of truth behind it. For fiction writers and poets, too, there's something wrong with you and you do this art as a way of correcting it or addressing it in some way.”

Way Art Said Behinds Fiction Poet Truth Is Jokes Fiction Writers Correcting Manic Writers And Poets

Author:T.C. Boyle

“Many of the poets I most admire have a way of embodying their peculiar obsessions via landscape that can sometimes seem magical.”

Way Sometimes Seems Poet Obsession Admire Landscape Peculiar

Author:Anna Journey

“In America it's a particular problem. The artist, particularly the poet, is just unacknowledged; if I can use that dumb word. Maybe it has always been that way. Maybe the only way he or she can be acknowledged is to be connected with some movement, be it religious or political.”

Ifs Way I Can Use Problem America Political Artist Religious Movement Particular Poet Connected Dumb

Author:Gerald Stern

“I've been trying to come to terms with what I am and what I do and what I believe in. And I see that I'm not happy with - well, it's almost as if being a poet is not enough for me. It's too late for me to do more now. I did what I could in a small way. I did it as theater, too, to be honest.”

Ifs Way Trying Believe Wells Enough I Believe Term Honest Poet Late Theater I Believe In Being Honest Too Late Not Happy

Author:Gerald Stern

“Each of us as poets, as decent suffering human beings, has to find a way to run our lives that is compassionate toward one another and toward our environment.”

Way Humans Running Suffering Human Beings Environment Our Lives Poet Decent Compassionate Our Environment

Author:Sam Hamill

“I'm not a poet, but I was in the poetry program. And I'm also not much of a nonfiction writer, at least not in the standard sense of nonfiction, nor especially in the way we were thinking about nonfiction back then, in the late 90s.”

Thinking Way Poet Late Standards Program Nonfiction

Author:John D'Agata

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