Matthea Harvey Quotes About Writing

Quotes about: Writing

• 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.

  Matthea Harvey

  Spring, Ocean, Flower

  Source: www.teachingbooks.net

• 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.

  Matthea Harvey

  Taken, Writing, Feet

  Source: www.raintaxi.com

• I'm pretty lenient with myself about time - if I feel like taking photographs of small things inside ice cubes or making animal collages, I just do it. When I want to write, I write. It's all part of the same thing for me.

  Matthea Harvey

  Writing, Animal, Ice

  Interview with Wendy Vardaman, poems.com. 2010.

• 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.

  Matthea Harvey

  Writing, Rope, May

  Source: www.raintaxi.com

• Poetic success is when you write a poem that makes you excited and bewildered and aglow.

  Matthea Harvey

  Writing, Poetic, Excited

  "Matthea Harvey, author of 'Modern Life'". Interview with Wendy Vardaman, www.versewisconsin.org.

• Usually form seems to find me in the process of writing a poem, though I have nothing against starting out with the form.

  Matthea Harvey

  Writing, Starting Out, Form

  Source: www.teachingbooks.net

• In my own writing, I've mostly abandoned end-rhyme, but wordplay is still a huge part of my process. I've written a series of mermaid poems in the last few years. The first one was called "The Straightforward Mermaid" which arose from my delight in that word combination. After that, I decided that future mermaid poems would have to be words ending in "d" or "t," which led to "The Deadbeat Mermaid," "The Morbid Mermaid" and so forth . . .

  Matthea Harvey

  Writing, Mermaid, Morbid

• Writing a poem is always a process of subtracting: you start with all of language available to you, and you choose a smaller field.

  Matthea Harvey

  Writing, Fields, Language

  "'All of these things are poetry.'". Interview with Stephanie Palumbo, logger.believermag.com. August 21, 2014.

• In my own writing, I've mostly abandoned end-rhyme, but wordplay is still a huge part of my process.

  Matthea Harvey

  Writing, Abandoned, Ends

  Source: www.raintaxi.com

• Writing directly from a feeling of anger or sadness is difficult, but if you distract part of your brain with word games, the ignored emotion often tiptoes in.

  Matthea Harvey

  Writing, Sadness, Games

  "'All of these things are poetry.'". Interview with Stephanie Palumbo, logger.believermag.com. August 21, 2014.

• There isn't a grand plan at work in the progression of the books with respect to the line. I do want the books to be different from each other, certainly, but I'm more aware of that on the level of theme or structure. I can tell when I'm writing the last of a particular type of poem because the writing is too easy and I start to feel queasy.

  Matthea Harvey

  Book, Writing, Different

  Source: www.raintaxi.com

• A lot of people are writing poems and don't realize it. They have this limited idea of how the poem should sound or what subjects it should address.

  Matthea Harvey

  Writing, Ideas, People

  "'All of these things are poetry.'". Interview with Stephanie Palumbo, logger.believermag.com. August 21, 2014.

• I certainly believe you can write a narrative lyric or a lyrical narrative - why not a nyric or a larrative?

  Matthea Harvey

  Believe, Writing, Why Not

  Source: www.raintaxi.com

• I write poems from dreams pretty frequently. It's limiting to think the poem has to come from a sensical lyric "I" stating things clearly or dramatically. This whole course is trying to say there are millions of ways to approach writing a poem.

  Matthea Harvey

  Dream, Writing, Thinking

  "'All of these things are poetry.'". Interview with Stephanie Palumbo, logger.believermag.com. August 21, 2014.

• When I start writing a poem, I can usually know quite early on whether it's a lineated or prose poem, but I don't think I can explain how. It's like deciding whether to wear a skirt or a pair of pants.

  Matthea Harvey

  Writing, Thinking, Pants

  Source: www.raintaxi.com

• I think there are people who do write regionally, because that's their subject matter - the way the sunset looks over a strip mall, memories of flirting at the ice rink, waking up to a deer at the window... Up to now, that hasn't been mine.

  Matthea Harvey

  Memories, Writing, Sunset

  Source: www.teachingbooks.net

• I think of poetry as a very inclusive term. Still, it's interesting that people want to make the distinction. I love the magazine Double Room for that reason (contributors have to write about their ideas on the prose poem/flash fiction).

  Matthea Harvey

  Writing, Thinking, Ideas

  Source: www.raintaxi.com

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