Poet Quotes - Page 17

• Chloe Honum's brilliant first book The Tulip-Flame traces an identity forming within radically divergent but interlocking systems: a family traumatized by the mother's suicide, a failed relationship, the practice of ballet, a garden-each strict, exacting. And with 'a crow's sky-knowing mind,' Honum in every case transfigures emotion by way of elegant language and formal restraint. Chloe Honum is 'one astounding flame' of a poet, and I predict a long-lasting one.

  Claudia Emerson

  Mother, Suicide, Book

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• Fighting for one's freedom, struggling towards being free, is like struggling to be a poet or a good Christian or a good Jew or a good Muslim or good Zen Buddhist. You work all day long and achieve some kind of level of success by nightfall, go to sleep and wake up the next morning with the job still to be done. So you start all over again.

  Maya Angelou

  Christian, Buddhist, Morning

  "Bill Moyers Journal", billmoyers.com. November 21, 1973.

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• I've been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet, a pawn and a king
  I've been up and down and over and out and I know one thing
  Each time I find myself flat on my face
  I pick myself up and get back in the race

  Frank Sinatra

  Kings, Race, Pirate

  Song: That's Life, Album: That's Life

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• If you want poets in space, you'll have to wait.

  Buzz Aldrin

  Space, Waiting, Want

  "Tea with Buzz Aldrin" by John Hind, www.theguardian.com. January 22, 2011.

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• Poets think in short lines. Unless you're Samuel Beckett, Twitter might be more difficult for novelists.

  Kenneth Goldsmith

  Thinking, Novelists, Lines

  Source: logger.believermag.com

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• I try to avoid calling myself a poet because I think that's something someone else has to call you. It's like bragging.

  Dorianne Laux

  Thinking, Trying, Calling

  "Road Trip". Interview with Ali Liebegott, logger.believermag.com. April 2, 2013.

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• I kind of think that artists throughout history, poets throughout history have been criticized for sharing what's on people's minds and I don't think it's any different now.

  Russell Simmons

  Artist, Thinking, People

  Source: www.foxnews.com

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• There is an old Arabic proverb, 'When the king puts the poet on his payroll, he cuts off the tongue of the poet', so throughout the ages, people in power have liked to control music, they used to throw songwriters in jail throughout history, and were assassinated.

  Pete Seeger

  Kings, Cutting, Jail

  "An Interview With Pete Seeger In Beacon, NY". Interview with Pete Mason, nysmusic.com. January 31, 2014.

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• I do not understand why any poet or writer would run for office; that's a different sense of who you are. I'm just a poet. I am as truthful as I can be. That makes me an artist. I heed the people; I do not lead the people.

  Nikki Giovanni

  Running, Artist, Office

  "Nikki Giovanni - Celebrity Guest Author Interview". Interview with Cheryl Holloway, www.cherylholloway.net. February 14, 2014.

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• The only advice [for new writers and poets] I can offer is to be yourself: not the self someone else wants you to be, but the self you are. Enjoy yourself and your life. But most of all travel and eat. That's how we learn.

  Nikki Giovanni

  Being Yourself, Advice, Want

  "Nikki Giovanni - Celebrity Guest Author Interview". Interview with Cheryl Holloway, www.cherylholloway.net. February 14, 2014.

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• I hear poetry whenever I turn on the radio. Eminem is a better poet than just about everybody. He's better than Billy Collins; he's better than Richard Wilbur; he's better than me.

  Sherman Alexie

  Radio, Turns, Turn-on

  "Born again, again". Interview with Dale Bridges for Boulder Weekly, dalebridges.org. 2007.

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• A really good stand-up comic is a poet; it's about the use of language. It can be really poetic. And I like politically conscious comedy.

  Sherman Alexie

  Use, Comedy, Language

  Interview with Joelle Fraser, www.english.illinois.edu. 2000.

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• Novelists have to love humanity to write anything worthwhile. Poets have to love themselves.

  Marita Golden

  Writing, Humanity, Novelists

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• A children's writer should, ideally, be a dedicated semi-lunatic, a kind of poet with a marvelous idea, who, preferably, when not committing the marvellous idea to paper, does something else of a quite different kind, so as to acquire new and rich experience.

  Joan Aiken

  Children, Ideas, Doe

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• I have more questions than answers in this world as do most poets and writers. The field of memory we exist in is absolutely encompassing and is both a question and answer. It is memory that provides the heart with impetus, fuels the brain, and propels the corn plant from seed to fruit.

  Joy Harjo

  Memories, Heart, Brain

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• I believe that poets have to be inside their poems somewhere, or the poem won't work.

  Joy Harjo

  Believe, Poetry, I Believe

  Joy Harjo, Laura Coltelli (1996). “The spiral of memory: interviews”, Univ of Michigan Pr

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• I am the poet of the high wire - I never do stunts; I do theatrical performances.

  Philippe Petit

  Wire, Stuntman, Theatrical

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• Language becomes a prison house only poets can escape...if we do not reject any strict distinctions between ordinary usage and figures of speech.

  Arthur Quinn

  House, Speech, Ordinary

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• We photographers are poets in the language of symbols.

  Jan Phillips

  Photographer, Language, Symbols

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• when a great war has cut off the young men of a nation it never can be told thereafter what losses of scholars, poets, thinkers and great designers the country and the world have suffered.

  James Vila Blake

  Country, War, Cutting

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• Here's one more from my limited experience with all 3 fields: A writer creates life; a poet creates magic from life; a philosopher tries to understand life.

  Siddharth Katragadda

  Magic, Trying, Fields

  "Dark Rooms: A Saga". Book by Siddharth Katragadda, 2001.

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• nobody alive or dead deserves to be called a poetess.

  Helen Bevington

  Alive, Deserve

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• For a poet, style is the only morality.

  Jennifer Stone

  Poetry, Style, Morality

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• Without constraint, without any form of mental compulsion, the act of belief becomes the freest possible projection of what resides in our hearts. Like the poet's image of a church bell that reveals its latent music only when struck, or a dragonfly that flames forth its beauty only in flight, so does the content of a human heart lie buried until action calls it forth. The greatest act of self-revelation occurs when we choose what we will believe, in that space of freedom that exists between knowing that a thing is and knowing that a thing is not.

  Terryl L. Givens

  Lying, Believe, Heart

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• We will certainly see teachers, journalists, artists and poets in space. Whatever it takes to the be the best is what it will take to get you into space.

  Gene Cernan

  Teacher, Artist, Space

  Live Chat, www.cnn.com. January 21, 1999.

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