Best poet & writing Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings Page 5

“I personally believe the role of poets as poets (which is something different from our obligations as citizens, community members, humans) is to write poems. I believe this because I am quite sure poetry can do something no other form or writing, or human activity, can, at least not in such a powerful and distilled and undeniable way. And that we need this type of thinking for our survival as individuals and as a species.”

Thinking Writing Believe Different Individual I Believe Community Powerful Poet Survival Obligation

Author:Matthew Zapruder

“I think it is our job as poets to refuse the terms that society so often sets for usefulness. That, for instance, is what Dickinson did: she refused to be a wife, a homemaker, a standard member of her community. She knew she had to in order to have the space and time to write her poems. Thank god she said no!”

Thinking Writing Term Community Wife Poet Thank God Time And Space Usefulness Homemaker

Author:Matthew Zapruder

“I wanted to write not exclusively for (or against) poets or scholars, though many of them are people, too! But that was not my primary audience. It was that person you like who tells you they don't get poetry, and you think to yourself, aw man, what can I do for this good person?”

People Thinking Men Writing Audience Poet Scholar Good Person

Author:Matthew Zapruder

“I never felt like a Chinese citizen because I was pushed away at a very young age. My father, a writer, was a national enemy of the Communist Party. He was forbidden to write for 20 years. We literally lived underground. We dug a hole and lived there for years. My father cleaned public toilets, even though he was a highly respected poet. Nationality and borders are barriers to our intelligence, to our imagination and to all kinds of possibilities.”

Writing Kind Age Father Imagination Party Enemy Possibility Poet All Kinds Chinese Barriers Communist Forbidden

Author:Ai Weiwei

“When I came into consciousness as a writer when I was in my early 20s, I just assumed that a writer did - a poet writer did everything all at once. I would write poetry, and while writing poetry I would also write work in the world - if I could get into the world.”

World Writing Consciousness Poet Writing Poetry

Author:W. S. Di Piero

“Dante Alighieri was not only a Christian poet or a priest, he was a man. He was a real poet. We can understand that the goal of Divine Comedy is beauty. You don't need also to understand Italian or to know Italian, because when Dante's writing, when we recite Dante out loud, it explodes a cosmos of illumination like to recite music, a symphony.”

Men Writing Real Christian Goal Comedy Divine Poet Italian

Author:Roberto Benigni

“I tend to like the way poets form communities. Writing can be lonely after all. Modern life can be lonely. Poets do seem to be more social than fiction writers. This could be because of poetry's roots in the oral tradition - poetry is read aloud and even performed. I'm just speculating, of course. At any rate, because poets form these groups, they learn from one another. That is one of the best things about being a poet.”

Writing Community Modern Poet Tradition Lonely Rate Poetry Is

Author:Rae Armantrout

“Poets tend to form loose groups - the "Romantics" or the "Imagists". And sometimes they write manifestoes in the name of these groups. This can be good. It forces the poet and the audience to think. But it can also be dangerous. It can turn into a branding device so that potential readers believe they know all they need to know once they know you've been associated with a certain group or position. It can freeze things in place. That's where thinking stops.”

Thinking Writing Believe Sometimes Audience Dangerous Poet Be Good Branding

Author:Rae Armantrout

“I'm not going to tell people how to write, but we do have a skill set, and the more we put ourselves out into the world as poets, as a sort of poet of the tribe, as representatives of metaphor, and try to claim space for metaphor in the inner life, that's going to be important and be helpful to poetry and bring a tension for poets writing about whatever they choose.”

People World Writing Trying Important Poet Metaphor Tension Helpful

Author:David Biespiel

“Because so many poets have chosen a political idiom right now in the US and so many poets have assigned value and inherent knowledge to their racial identity and used that as a form of argumentation, I'm thinking now's a good time to buy low for my own poems and write poems that are deeply in the interior and the psyche. There are plenty of people out there working on subjects of political poetry, partisan poetry, all the way through to crossing the threshold of propaganda. I start thinking now's a good time for me to start writing about the myths of my own psyche.”

People Thinking Writing Political Values Identity Poet Myth Chosen Plenty Propaganda Good Times Idiom

Author:David Biespiel

“There's not a big range in the political poetry of the last year, or not a political range. On the one hand, no poet that I know of who writes in English in the United States is anything but a humanist. So all poets, including myself, seem to be under that umbrella. We just don't have Rush Limbaugh poets, Ann Coulter poets.”

Writing Political Poet Humanist Umbrella

Author:David Biespiel

“Despite wanting to work in publishing, I was a publisher's worst nightmare: I rarely bought new books. So my goal was to publish the kind of books I would buy, and read. My reading habits have changed since starting the press. The only other "goal", per say, is to continue to experiment. I don't want the press to ever fall into a formula, or to be pigeonholed - "They do great reissues of modernist poets!" - I want to keep pushing, exploring the kind of title we can get away with. And working with authors who challenge the way I think about writing, editing and reading.”

Thinking Writing Kind Book Fall Reading Goal Challenges Worst Changed Poet Habit Nightmare Get Away Publishing Exploring Publish Reading Habits

Author:Andrew Latimer

“Italian is a very different poetic situation and there are these hard and fast rhythmic periods, settenari, ottonari of seven and eight syllables. These are fundamental to the way people speak and write and breaking them is more radical in Italian than when we break a line. I'm sure there are Italian poets who want to write poetry as prose and break these Petrarchan rules. And breaking them is fun and a valid thing to do. But I'm more interested in trying to write poetry that absorbs tradition and uses it in new ways, and doesn't throw it out.”

People Writing Trying Different Speak Fun Situation Break Poet Tradition Seven Radical Prose Poetic Italian

Author:Jonathan W. Galassi

“Once a poet always a poet, and even though I haven't written poems for a long time, I can nonetheless say that everything I've ever learned about writing lyrical fiction has been informed by three decades of writing in lines and stanzas. For me the real drama of fiction is almost always the drama of the language.”

Writing Long Real Language Poet Drama Lyrical

Author:Jack Driscoll

“I began as a poet, moved to short fiction, then to novel writing, and, for the past twelve years, back to stories. I sometimes wonder if the pendulum will swing all the way back to where I began. As T.S. Eliot says, "In my end is my beginning," but for now I'm staying put, sitting tight, and loving the short story form way too much to leave it quite yet.”

Writing Sometimes Past Wonder Novel Poet Moved Short Story Eliot

Author:Jack Driscoll

“The Baathist state did two things extremely well. One was create information-gathering intelligence networks and a filing system. There's actually a lot of information on a lot of people and that is a major achievement of a police state. The second one is the promotion of literature and poetry, and the arts generally. So this is a state that's producing mass police archives - surveillance - and poetry. And in fact a lot of the archives are about what poets are writing or what they should be writing.”

People Writing Art Literature Poet Achievement Police Promotion Police State

Author:Elliott Colla

“"Ageism" or whatever you want to call it, is a very English phenomenon. You don't get it too much in many other cultures. And no one says it about authors or poets or filmmakers. "Oh, they're too old to make films or write books." You know what I mean?”

Writing Mean Book Film Culture Poet Filmmaker Phenomenon

Author:Paul Weller

“As poets, we're writing into the void, and we're not writing to be bestsellers. Whatever individual responses we get, whether at a reading, by a conversation or a letter, mean the world.”

World Writing Mean Reading Individual Poet Response

Author:Mary Jo Salter

“A poet could write volumes about diners, because they're so beautiful. They're brightly lit, with chrome and booths and Naugahyde and great waitresses. Now, it might not be so great in the health department, but I think diner food is really worth experiencing periodically.”

Thinking Writing Might Beautiful Poet Department Volume Lit Waitress Diners Chrome

Author:David Lynch

“A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.”

Source: Future visions: the unpublished papers of Abraham Maslow

“Maybe the example of Southern fiction writing has been so powerful that Southern poets have sort of keyed themselves to that.”

Writing Has Beens Powerful Fiction Example Poet Southern Fiction Writing

Author:Robert Morgan

“Southern poets are still writing narrative poems, poems in forms, dramatic poems.”

Writing Stills Form Poet Narrative Dramatic Southern

Author:Robert Morgan

“Always be a poet, even in prose.”

Writing Poetry Literature Poet Prose Poetic

Book:Intimate Journals

Source: Intimate Journals

“A writer should have the precision of a poet and the imagination of a scientist.”

Should Writing Art Imagination Poet Should Have Scientist Poetic Precision

Author:Vladimir Nabokov

“Productivity is a relative matter. And it's really insignificant: What is ultimately important is a writer's strongest books. It may be the case that we all must write many books in order to achieve a few lasting ones - just as a young writer or poet might have to write hundreds of poems before writing his first significant one.”

Writing Firsts May Important Book Matter Might Young Order Cases Achieve Poet Productivity Significant Lasting Strongest Relative Insignificant Young Writers

Book:Conversations with Joyce Carol Oates

Source: Conversations with Joyce Carol Oates

“I consider myself kind of a reporter - one who uses words that are more like music and that have a choreography. I never think of myself as a poet; I just get up and write.”

Thinking Writing Kind Use Poet Get Up Reporters Choreography

Author:Mary Oliver

“There are two types of poets: People who write poetically about their lives, and poets that live poetically and write about it.”

People Writing Two Poet Type

Author:Daniel Radcliffe

“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.”

Way Writing Happens Literature My Own Clear Style Poet Decided Experiments

Book:Ever the Winds of Chance

Source: Ever the Winds of Chance

“A poet looks at the world the way a man looks at a woman.”

Men World Way Writing Looks Poetry Poet Poetic Housework

Author:Wallace Stevens

“I started out as a poet. I've always been a poet since I was 7 or 8. And so I feel myself to be fundamentally a poet who got into writing novels.”

Feels Writing Novel Poet

Author:Alice Walker

“A poet can survive everything but a misprint.”

Life Writing Funny Poetry Poet Witty Novel Writing

Book:Reviews

Source: Reviews

“A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it. Writers know words are their way towards truth and freedom, and so they use them with care, with thought, with fear, with delight. By using words well they strengthen their souls. Story-tellers and poets spend their lives learning that skill and art of using words well. And their words make the souls of their readers stronger, brighter, deeper.”

Knows Way Writing Wells Mean Persons Art Soul Stories Use Care Poet Reader Skills Stronger Delight Deeper Who Cares Brighter Life Learning Using Words

Author:Ursula K. Le Guin

“If you want to become a man of letters and perhaps write some Histories one day, you must also lie and invent tales, otherwise your History would become monotonous. But you must act with restraint. The world condemns liars who do nothing but lie, even about the most trivial things, and it rewards poets, who lie only about the greatest things.”

Ifs Men World Want Writing Lying Poet One Day Letters Rewards Tales Liars Restraint Monotonous Trivial Things

Book:Baudolino

Source: Baudolino

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