American Poetry Quotes

• Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion.

  T. S. Eliot

  Poetry, Personality, Individual Talent

  The Sacred Wood "Tradition and the Individual Talent" (1920)

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• Do not go gentle into that good night.

  Dylan Thomas

  Tattoo, Good Night, Goodnight

  "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" l. 16 (1952)

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• I was very interested in American poetry for many years. Much less now.

  Norman MacCaig

  Years, Literature

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• I definitely wish to distinguish American poetry from British or other English language poetry.

  Diane Wakoski

  Wish, Language, British

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• I think the best American poetry is the poetry that utilizes the resources of poetry rather than exploits the defects or triumphs of the poet's personality.

  Mark Strand

  Thinking, Personality, Triumph

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• I would say that American poetry has always been a poetry of personal testimony.

  Mark Strand

  Testimony

  "In the Presence of America: A Conversation with Mark Strand". Interview with Katharine Coles, weberstudies.weber.edu. 1992.

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• Someone said, in a simplistic way maybe, that all American poetry is either cooked or raw, and if it's cooked, it comes from Poe.

  Frederic Tuten

  Way, Said, Poetry Is

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• High and low culture come together in all Post Modern art, and American poetry is not excluded from this.

  Diane Wakoski

  Art, Together, Culture

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• Probably the high-watermark of [Bob] Dylan's career came after he plugged in his guitar ("Judas!" one fan shouted during a concert) and exploded American poetry, combining Beat aesthetics, psychedelic imagery, collage techniques.

  Jay Michaelson

  Guitar, Careers, Technique

  Source: www.thedailybeast.com

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• I'm educating myself more about world poetry. I know a lot about contemporary American poetry, so I felt I needed to learn more about figures like Borges, Akhmatova, Neruda, etc. I felt I needed a bigger lens to see poetry through. It really helps to see poetry as a world language, and not just something American.

  Allison Joseph

  Etc, Lenses, World

  Source: lunchticket.org

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• I have always loved American poetry, which is very different from Irish poetry.

  Eavan Boland

  Different

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• Twentieth-century American poetry has been one of the glories of modern literature.

  Helen Vendler

  Literature, Glory, Modern

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• I teach a lecture course on American poetry to as many as 150 students. For a lot of them, its their only elective, so this is their one shot. Theyll take the Russian Novel or American Poetry, so I want to give them the high points, the inescapable poets.

  Robert Hass

  Giving, Want, Lectures

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• What I discerned in the U.S. was a convergence of poetic voices coming from many different rents in the social fabric, many cultures, many tributaries, which, together, make up the American poetry of the late twentieth century.

  Adrienne Rich

  Voice, Together, Different

  Source: criticalflame.org

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• I still believe in this country, that it can fulfill the destiny Blake and Whitman envisioned. I still believe in American poetry.

  Philip Levine

  Country, Believe, Destiny

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• Mandelstam is the sort of poet who comes along very, very rarely. Even the two Russian poets whose work is often linked with his - Anna Akhmatova and Marina Tsvetaeva - though their work is more "urgent" than most American poetry, seem to me to operate at a lesser charge than Mandelstam.

  Christian Wiman

  Two, Poet, Anna

  Source: bigthink.com

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• I can't think offhand of any American poets who have Mandelstam's urgency, but it's a different country and a different time, and I don't think it would make much sense to say that this is something that's "missing" from contemporary American poetry.

  Christian Wiman

  Country, Thinking, Missing

  Source: bigthink.com

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• I'll say that this is probably the best time for poetry since the T'ang dynasty. All the rest of the world is going to school on American poetry in the twentieth century, from Ezra Pound to W. S. Merwin, and for very good reason. We have soaked up influence in the last century like a sponge. It's cross-pollination, first law of biology, that the more variety you have the more health you have.

  Sam Hamill

  School, Law, Dynasty

  Interview with Anne-Marie Cusac, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. March 31, 2003.

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• There's a sameness about American poetry that I don't
  think represents the whole people. It represents a poetry
  of the moment, a poetry of evasion, and I have problems
  with this. I believe poetry has always been political, long
  before poets had to deal with the page and white
  space . . . it's natural.

  Yusef Komunyakaa

  Believe, Thinking, White

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• From reading a previous answer, you know that I consider all those aspects to be part of American cultural myth and thus they figure into good American poetry, whether the poet is aware of what he is doing or not.

  Diane Wakoski

  Reading, Answers, Literature

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• American poetry is always about defining oneself individually,claiming one's right to be different and often to break taboos.

  Diane Wakoski

  Different, Literature, Defining

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• Robert Creeley has forged a signature style in American poetry, an idiosyncratic, highly elliptical, syntactical compression by which the character of his mind’s concentrated and stumbling proposals might be expressed … Reading his poems, we experience the gnash of arriving through feeling at thought and word.

  Forrest Gander

  Reading, Character, Feelings

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• Some people swear by writing courses, but whether it really helps American poetry, I have doubts.

  Robert Morgan

  Writing, People, Doubt

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• I don't think American poetry has gotten any better in the past 35 years. Oddly enough, creative writing programs seem to have been good for fiction, and I would not have predicted that.

  Robert Morgan

  Writing, Past, Thinking

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• Kerouac: You're ruining American poetry, O'Hara. O'Hara: That's more than you ever did for it, Kerouac

  Frank O'Hara

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