James Arthur Quotes About Writing

Quotes about: Writing

• It's true, there aren't many explicit references to Canada in my book. And not many explicit references to the U.S., either. I try to fill my poems with enough real, observed detail that the poems create a believable world - but I don't write poems for the sake of telling my own story. My life is not important or interesting enough to warrant that kind of documentary. Instead I try to use my experience as a way of understanding situations that are common to many people. I want readers to project their own lives onto my poems.

  James Arthur

  Real, Book, Writing

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• I do own CDs by Neil Young, Leonard Cohen, and Joni Mitchell, but I don't think of them as being major influences on my writing.

  James Arthur

  Writing, Thinking, Influence

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• I wrote the poems in Charms Against Lightning one by one, over almost a decade, and I did not write them toward any theme or narrative. But once I really got serious about putting together a book, I began to see that in fact there were themes across the poems, if only because my own obsessions had brought me back time and again to the same ground. I realized that any ordering of the poems would determine how those themes developed over the manuscript, and how the collection's dramatic conflicts were resolved.

  James Arthur

  Book, Writing, Together

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• 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.

  James Arthur

  Art, Writing, Giving

  "Poetry As a Way of Thinking: An Interview with James Arthur". Interview with Emilia Phillips, www.32poems.com.

• I don't think I did write any poems to fill narrative gaps. Not consciously, anyway. As much as possible, I try to discover my poems' subject matter through the act of writing, instead of deciding ahead of time what my poems will be about.

  James Arthur

  Writing, Thinking, Trying

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• I often write from memory by walking around and talking to myself. Even when I'm working at a computer I write out loud, so that I can hear the poem's rhythm.

  James Arthur

  Memories, Writing, Talking

  "Poetry As a Way of Thinking: An Interview with James Arthur". Interview with Emilia Phillips, www.32poems.com.

• When I'm most deeply involved in my writing, sometimes I do dream about poetry, and occasionally I wake up from a dream with a phrase that I like well enough to put it in a poem.

  James Arthur

  Dream, Writing, Wake Up

  "Poetry As a Way of Thinking: An Interview with James Arthur". Interview with Emilia Phillips, www.32poems.com.

• Years ago I used to set my alarm for 4 am, so that I could wake up in the middle of a dream and move directly into writing. I guess my favorite poems contain a mixture of intuitive and analytical thought.

  James Arthur

  Dream, Moving, Writing

  "Poetry As a Way of Thinking: An Interview with James Arthur". Interview with Emilia Phillips, www.32poems.com.

• Our analytical faculties allow us to look critically at our writing and interpret it. Sometimes we make bold, impulsive edits to our poems, but most forms of precision and economy in poetry, it seems to me, are signatures of the analytical mind.

  James Arthur

  Writing, Mind, Signatures

  Source: www.32poems.com

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