Best poet & writing Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings Page 4

“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

“It's difficult to put your own bare ass out on the limb every time you sit down to write a poem. But that's really sort of the ideal. Because if we don't discover something about ourselves and our world in the making of a poem, chances are it's not going to be a very good poem. So what I'm saying is that a lot of our best poets could be better poets if they wrote less and risked more in what they do.”

Ifs World Writing Difficult Chance Poet Ideals Very Good Ass Our World Limbs Chances Are Best Poet

Author:Sam Hamill

“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.”

“Joyce's writing in Dubliners contains some of the most unshowily beautiful sentences in the English language. I learned from him that if you write a good, clean line of English, you can get under a reader's skin. The reader won't even know why, but there you are. Didion, Berger, the many others I mentioned above, and many, many poets I haven't mentioned. Writers of this calibre are the moving targets the rest of us are always chasing.”

Ifs Knows Writing Beautiful Moving Language Lines Havens Poet Reader Skins Clean Sentences Target Chasing English Language Joyce

Author:Teju Cole

“I'm a poet. I'm just a renaissance man in my heart. I can build shelves and I can write poetry.”

Men Writing Heart I Can Poet My Heart Shelves Renaissance Renaissance Man

Author:Anthony Mackie

“She [Carol Parsinan] somehow read my poems and came back to me and convinced me that I could be a poet, that I had the passion and the enthusiasm and the creativity to become a poet, but that what I was writing was not poetry because I was just expressing my feelings and I wasn't try to make anything.”

Writing Trying Feelings Passion Creativity Poet Convinced Enthusiasm Poetry Is Carols

Author:Edward Hirsch

“In a way, that's also a recognition that Dante needs Virgil and that the Inferno needs the Aeneid and that the epic needs a model and that for Dante to write this great poem he needs someone to come before him and he turns to Virgil's text, especially book six where Aeneas goes down into the underworld. And for me, that's a model of the poet's relationship to previous poetry, to another poetry as calling out for guidance.”

Way Needs Writing Book Turns Poet Calling Six Models Recognition Guidance Epic Underworld Inferno Aeneas

Author:Edward Hirsch

“I would say there are different kinds of poems. There are things that poets in the history of poetry hit upon when they're very young that can never be outdone and it's a remarkable, strange experience when you think of say Arthur Rimbaud who write poetry between the ages of 17 and 21 whose career was over by the time he was 22.”

Thinking Writing Kind Different Age Young Careers Strange Poet Remarkable Poetry Is Different Kinds Arthur

Author:Edward Hirsch

“So, the process of revision, it's not systematic. But for me, I mean, I know a lot of poets who write out a draft and then revise it and I think they're happier people. But, I'm just not able to do it that way. I need to just continually examine it as I do it.”

People Thinking Knows Way Needs Writing Mean Able Process Poet Systematic Revision

Author:Edward Hirsch

“I think that the dark side of MFA programs is that they're generating more poets than the culture can absorb and there are more people writing poetry than possibly read it or can certainly earn a living around it.”

People Thinking Writing Culture Sides Dark Poet Program Dark Side Writing Poetry

Author:Edward Hirsch

“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

“If I begin a poem, "I am a donkey," reason kicks in and says, "She is taking on the persona of a donkey." But if I write, "I have taken so many drugs I can't see my feet," the tendency is to take that as a confession on the part of the poet. Maybe that doesn't matter. I'd almost prefer for it to be the other way round.”

Ifs Way Writing I Can Matter Reason Taken Feet Poet Drug Rounds Tendencies Kicks Confession Persona Donkey

Author:Matthea Harvey

“I suppose it's useful in designating writing that tends to come from personal experience, work that delineates an "I," but it's a loose lasso, one which may rope certain poems by one poet and not others.”

Writing May Certain Poet Rope Personal Experiences

Author:Matthea Harvey

“Poets have to keep pushing, pushing, against the darkness, and write their way out of it as well.”

Way Writing Wells Darkness Poet Pushing

Author:Anne Waldman

“I remember I was very taken with a book called DreamTigers by [Jorge Luis] Borges. He was at the University of Texas, Austin, and they collected some of his writings and put them in a little collection. It's called DreamTigers in English, but it doesn't exist in Spanish. It's a little sampler. But that collection in English is what struck me, because in there he has his poems, and I was a poet as well as a fiction writer.”

Writing Wells Littles Book Remember Fiction Taken Poet University Collections Texas Fiction Writers Austin Borges University Of Texas

Author:Sandra Cisneros

“When I was fifteen I wrote seven hundred pages of an incredibly bad novel - it's a very funny book I still like a lot. Then, when I was nineteen I wrote a couple hundred pages of another novel, which wasn't very good either. I was still determined to be a writer. And since I was a writer, and here I was twenty-nine years old and I wasn't a very good poet and I wasn't a very good novelist, I thought I would try writing a play, which seems to have worked out a little better.”

Writing Trying Years Littles Stills Book Play Seems Novel Poet Couple Pages Hundred Twenties Seven Very Good Determined Nine Novelists Fifteen Nine Years Nineteen Funny Book

Book:Conversations with Edward Albee

Source: Conversations with Edward Albee

“I think Walt Whitman went to the help wanted section and found a squib that said "Wanted: National Poet." And he was innocent enough to believe there really was such a job. And if he could just write a poem that incorporated everything he felt and suspected and hoped for from America that he would have the position.”

Ifs Thinking Writing Believe Said Enough Helping Wanted Jobs America Found Felt Position Poet Innocent Sections Walt

Author:Allan Gurganus

“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

“People are born with the knack to write poems and songs. I'm not a poet at all.”

People Writing Song Born Poet Knack

Author:Petra Haden

“You have to be a poet to know how to write a song with lyrics.”

Knows Writing Song Know How Poet

Author:Petra Haden

“I co-edited an anthology called Interfictions with Delia Sherman and wrote a short scholarly book on three women poets called Voices from Fairyland: The Fantastical Poems of Mary Coleridge, Charlotte Mew, and Sylvia Townsend Warner. So I've been busy, but I haven't had time to write a novel.”

Writing Book Three Voice Novel Havens Poet Busy Mary Anthology Charlotte Edited Scholarly

Author:Theodora Goss

“There are some singer-songwriters who start out as poets. So someone like Leonard Cohen wrote and published poetry in the early 60s, but then started writing songs. Bob Dylan's a poet in the sense of bard, aoidos or vates.”

Writing Song Poet Singers Bob Songwriters Dylan Singer Songwriters Writing Songs Bards

Author:Richard F. Thomas

“The judges who awarded the 1980 Commonwealth Poetry Prize to my first collection of poems, Crossing the Peninsula and Other Poems, cited with approval and with no apparent conscious irony my early poem, "No Alarms." The poem was composed probably sometime in 1974 or 1975, and it complained about the impossibility of writing poetry - of being a poet - under the conditions in which I was living then.”

Writing Firsts Conditions Poet Judging Conscious Irony Collections Prize Approval Impossibility Alarms Crossings Commonwealth Writing Poetry Peninsulas

Author:Shirley Geok-lin Lim

“John Milton famously claimed, "Fame is the spur" for the poet, and indeed when we consider the six years he spent writing Paradise Lost, and the additional years revising it, from 1664 to 1674, we may allow that spur.”

Writing Years May Lost Poet Fame Six Paradise Spurs Milton Revising

Author:Shirley Geok-lin Lim

“Signs of a maddening system of writing and counting that calibrates the values of something the poet does not yet know. Praxis is therefore poetics.”

Knows Writing Doe Values Poet Counting Praxis

Author:Shirley Geok-lin Lim

“Fiction writers have their own world, and poets have their own world, and literary criticism has sort of passed over into cultural studies in the university, and so on. They seem more disconnected from each other than they did when I first began to write.”

World Writing Firsts Seems Fiction Study Poet Criticism University Fiction Writers Disconnected Literary Criticism

Author:Robert Hass

“The laureateship [of U.S. Children's Poet] has brought me a couple of appealing contracts, including my first anthology, the 200-poem The National Geographic Book of Animal Poetry.Apart from the increased travel, I won't let anything interfere with writing poetry.”

Writing Firsts Children Book Animal Poet Couple Including Contracts Interfere Anthology Writing Poetry National Geographic

Author:J. Patrick Lewis

“These days, most of my interactions with young people are centered on the poetry or theater classes I teach, so the students I know are reading contemporary poets (they love Willie Perdomo) and scripts (No Child, by Nilaja Sun and Twilight by Anna Deavere Smith). I don't know their reading habits outside of our class, but I believe that they enjoy stories that they can relate to, learn from, be challenged by - you know, the usual good writing that every reader craves.”

“When I have a writing workshop, I like to have people that are anthropologists and people who are poking around in other fields, I like to have them all in the same workshop, and not worry about genre. I like to mix it up, because the kind of comments you can get from a fiction writer about your poetry are going to be very different than what you'll get from a poet. Or the comments you'll get from a filmmaker about your performance are going to be very different. My writing workshop is about mixing it up, cross-pollinating, not only in genres but in occupations.”

“I try to write lyrics that will be able to function on their own if they get separated from the music. But I wouldn't want to take anything away from poets, who work without the frames songwriters get from melody, and I think lyrics should be considered as their own thing.”

Ifs Thinking Want Should Writing Trying Able Poet Function Melody Songwriters

Author:John K. Samson

“I always hesitate to call myself a children's poet, and I always hesitate to call what I write for children poetry. Though a few of the verses that I've written, yes, I think they are truly poems.”

Thinking Writing Children Written Poet Verses

Author:Mary Ann Hoberman

“I think many poets, including myself, write both for the voice and for the page. I certainly write for the person alone in the library, who pulls down a book and it opens to a poem. I am also very conscious of what it means to read these poems aloud.”

Thinking Writing Mean Persons Book Voice Poet Pages Conscious Library Including

Author:Adrienne Rich

“You have to give your art everything you can - I don't mean only writing, but studying other poets and poetics, thinking, reading what poets have written other than their poetry.”

Thinking Giving Writing Mean Art Reading Study Written Poet

Author:Adrienne Rich

“When I was home, traditionally since I was young, I'd write in cafés. That was the romantic notion in 1963. Café atmospheres back then were different. The café life really stemmed from the Parisians' idea of it, with poets struggling over their poems and drinking coffee. No music, no sounds, maybe a little jazz, or soul, but mostly nothing. Now you go into a café and the music is really loud, people are having business meetings, they are on their cellphones. It changes from generation to generation.”

People Writing Littles Ideas Different Soul Home Young Sound Struggle Generations Poet Music Is Jazz Meetings Drinking Notion Coffee Atmosphere Loud Cellphone Drinking Coffee Business Meeting

Author:Patti Smith

“I think the whole emphasis in England, in universities, on practical criticism (but not that so much as on historical criticism, knowing what period a line comes from) this is almost paralysing. In America, in University, we read - what? - T. S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, Yeats, that is where we began. Shakespeare flaunted in the background. I'm not sure I agree with this, but I think that' for the young poet, the writing poet, it is not quite so frightening to go to university in America as it is in England, for these reasons.”

Thinking Writing Reason Whole America Young Lines Knowing Poet Periods Criticism England Agree Historical University Practicals Backgrounds Not Sure Frightening Emphasis Dylan Eliot Yeats

Author:Sylvia Plath

“I must say what I admire most is the person who masters an area of practical experience, and can teach me something. I mean, my local midwife has taught me how to keep bees. Well, she can't understand anything I write. And I find myself liking her, may I say, more than most poets. And among my friends I find people who know all about boats or know all about certain sports, or how to cut somebody open and remove an organ. I'm fascinated by this mastery of the practical.”

“I find myself absolutely fulfilled when I have written a poem, when I'm writing one. Having written one, then you fall away very rapidly from having been a poet to becoming a sort of poet in rest, which isn't the same thing at all. But I think the actual experience of writing a poem is a magnificent one.”

Thinking Writing Fall Written Poet Becoming Magnificent Fulfilled

Author:Sylvia Plath

“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. But I think you could also put it a different way. You, quote, find your voice, unquote, when you are able to invent this one character who resembles you, obviously, and probably is more like you than anyone else on earth, but is not the equivalent to you.”

Thinking Way Writing Mean Different Character Able Earth Found Voice Influence Poet Like You Findings Direct Different Ways Phrases Pet Workshops

Author:Billy Collins

“If you look at the Directory of American Poets and Writers, you know there are hundreds of poets in New York City. So therefore, just by specific gravity, it seems like a more significant place. Robert Wrigley is a poet who lives in rural Idaho - I think it's really back-country Idaho - and he writes beautiful poems.”

Thinking Writing Beautiful Poet Significant

Author:Ted Kooser

“If you can find two poems in a book, it could be a pretty good book for you. You know, two poems you really like. There are some poets who are fairly big names in contemporary poetry and who write a book and I might like three or four poems in the book, but the rest of them don't appeal to me personally; but I think that's the way it really ought to be. I think it's really a rare thing to like everything that somebody has written.”

Thinking Writing Book Poet Good Book

Author:Ted Kooser

“My poems are certainly in the lyric tradition, but perhaps a reader can tell me more precisely who I am as a poet. How can I be so old and not know? I have always been deeply grateful for the urge to write, the desire to create, that's certain. Writing has always been the way I make sense of life. Perhaps my poems define me, rather than the other way around. They do constantly surprise me.”

Writing Desire Poet Tradition Grateful Surprise Make Sense Surprise Me

Author:Connie Wanek

“Working with artists and other poets has made me aware that there was a bigger "me" that I hadn't been quite aware of. Plus we had a good time. It's so much fun to write, for example, with a big brush on a giant piece of paper and to help create visually attractive and surprising objects, which is not what you normally do when you're writing a poem. It's wonderful to create these pieces with artists.”

Writing Helping Artist Fun Wonderful Poet Attractive Good Times Had A Good Time

Author:Ron Padgett

“I hope I can write toward my interests. But poets should be afraid of too fluidly responding to what they're interested in.”

Writing Interest Poet

Author:Shane McCrae

“The more stringent the rules and the more limiting they are, the more the poet and writer is forced to resort to special techniques and intricacies to escape them. And these techniques and intricacies adorn the writing and make it more beautiful. But, in the modern world, linguistic intricacies and embellishments do not attract much attention anymore, and the more sincere and intimate the relationship between a work and its reader, the better.”

World Writing Beautiful Attention Modern Special Poet Intimate Sincere

Author:Simin Behbahani

“The fact that I'm a woman is as important to my work as a poet as the fact that Ahmad Shāmlu was a man was important to his work as a poet. Basically, gender shouldn't be viewed as an advantage in art. If a poem or a piece of writing is good, what difference does it make whether it's by a woman or a man? And, if it's bad, why should its writer's gender make it good?”

Men Writing Art Important Poet Gender

Author:Simin Behbahani

“My goals as an artist have nothing to do with speaking to an audience. I love to have a good time, but when it comes to poetry I'm not really interested in writing poetry that seeks to entertain or operate safely within the mainstream and, to be clear, I'm not disparaging the really phenomenal work that does - it's just not my interest as a poet.”

Writing Artist Goal Interest Audience Poet Good Times Having A Good Time Phenomenal Writing Poetry

Author:Dawn Lundy Martin

“In the arts, in places where you're not going to save lives or save species, I think there's no reason to play ball. I can't imagine a serious poet who would want to write or perform for most recent inauguration. I'd be very surprised if there were an inaugural poem, and I can't really imagine what that would be.”

Thinking Writing Art Reason Imagine Serious Poet Inauguration Inaugural

Author:Stephen Burt

“There are reviews that are clearly wrong. Dr. Johnson's famous Life of Savage, he's clearly wrong about the value of Savage. But it's one of the great works in English literature. You can learn more about the artistic expression and what the poet does and how to write about art from that than any number of guys who are terrible writers, who have no original ideas, but who say yes, "Hamlet" is a wonderful play. It's a meaningless statement.”

Writing Art Guy Values Literature Wonderful Poet Terrible Artistic Meaningless Great Work English Literature

Author:Gary Giddins

“When we look at the arts and letters in America, especially if we look at poetry, and poetry set to music, this dialogue, we have this very powerful beautiful, eclectic, diary, or narration of being in America, being American, participating in America, becoming more of America and also as an American, the American creative spirit, which is quite interesting. Our composers and poets have spent more time writing and thinking and speaking out of what it means to be a composer or poet as well as to be an American, or a composer or poet In America; both relationships.”

Thinking Writing Mean Art Beautiful Spirit Interesting Powerful Creative Poet Dialogue Composer Very Powerful Eclectic Speaking Out

Author:Thomas Hampson

“When I was learning to write I was surrounded by poets; Brian Blanchfield and Annie Guthrie were always with me as I was learning. I'm so grateful for the poets in my life. Because of them I always knew the importance of each word, line.”

Writing Poet Importance Grateful Annie So Grateful

Author:Samantha Hunt

Poet Quotes

Related topics

Poet Quotes