Poet Quotes - Page 36

• I don't believe a good poet is very often deliberately obscure. A poet writes in a way necessary to him or her; the reader may then find the poem difficult.

  Lydia Davis

  Believe, Writing, May

  Interview with Sarah Manguso, www.believermag.com. January, 2008.

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• I was brought up in a home where I saw my parents read and I was taken to bookshops and libraries, so I grew up feeling very comfortable around books. Also, Ireland is a country which has honoured its writers and poets, so when someone says they wanted to be a writer, its not mocked or looked down upon.

  Michael Scott

  Country, Book, Taken

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• Anyone who wants to be a writer should, if given the opportunity, hang out with "real writers," that is, poets or writers who are lions in literature, semi-lions, or published authors.

  Kirby Wright

  Real, Opportunity, Literature

  "Hawaii, Mortuaries, And Saving Kurt Vonnegut: An Interview With Kirby Wright". Interview with George Wallace, www.greatweatherformedia.com. September 5, 2013.

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• I think it's hard to be taken seriously as a poet, period.

  Amber Tamblyn

  Taken, Thinking, Periods

  Interview with Rachel Matlow, www.believermag.com. 2015.

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• The way our big cities change sucks. The beauty of cities was that they were edgy, sometimes even a little dangerous. Artists, poets, and activists could come and unify and create different kinds of scenes. Not just fashion scenes, scenes that were politically active. Big cities are getting so high-end oriented, business corporate fashion, fashion not in an artistic sense but in a corporate sense. For me that edgy beauty of cities is lost, wherever you go.

  Patti Smith

  Fashion, Artist, Cities

  Source: the-talks.com

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• Poets can tell the truth as they see it. It’s the author’s story, the author’s voice.

  Nikki Giovanni

  Voice, Stories, Telling The Truth

  Interview with Nicole Sealey, mosaicmagazine.org. September 6, 2013.

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• [To become a poet] The most important thing is to pay attention. The next would probably be to read; it's so important to pay attention. It keeps you from being bored, and I might add it keeps you from being boorish.

  Nikki Giovanni

  Bored, Important, Next

  Interview with Scholastic students, www.scholastic.com. 2002.

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• Living is the original art. As a young man I wanted to be a poet and I learned along the way that I already was a poet.

  Mark Nepo

  Art, Men, Way

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• If the poet spun for half an hour daily, his poetry would gain in richness.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Half, Gains, Hours

  Mahatma Gandhi (1984). “The Quintessence of Gandhi in His Own Words”

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• A man who is intentionally unarmed relies upon the Unseen Force called God by poets, but called the Unknown by scientists.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  God, Men, Rely Upon

  Mahatma Gandhi (1967). “The Mind of Mahatma Gandhi”, p.120, Rajpal & Sons

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• When there is war, the poet lays down the lyre, the lawyer his law reports, the schoolboy his books.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  War, Book, Law

  Mahatma Gandhi (1994). “The Gandhi Reader: A Sourcebook of His Life and Writings”, p.228, Grove Press

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• Painters and poets are obliged to exaggerate the proportions of their figures in order to give true perspective.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Art, Order, Giving

  Mahatma Gandhi (1997). “The Mahatma and the Poet: Letters and Debates Between Gandhi and Tagore, 1915-1941”, National Book Trust India

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• Even the dog is described by the poet to have received justice under Ramarajya.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Dog, Justice, Reason

  Mahatma Gandhi (1984). “The Quintessence of Gandhi in His Own Words”

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• As a very young poet, I had been brought up on that dogma that politics was bad for poetry.

  Adrienne Rich

  Dogma, Young

  Source: criticalflame.org

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• Over many years so many poets have touched my imagination and opened paths for me - it hardly makes sense to list them. I have always read a great deal of poetry.

  Adrienne Rich

  Years, Imagination, Path

  Source: criticalflame.org

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• I think poets should work in the non-literary, non-academic world, get to know more than a workshop or a university.

  Adrienne Rich

  Thinking, World, Academic

  Source: criticalflame.org

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• You can't criticize Bob Dylan's singing. You have to respect Billy Joel as a brilliant poet. You can't tell me there's a better rock band ever than Led Zeppelin. And if you speak during the Eagles' "Last Resort," we're done. I'm just asking for seven minutes. This stuff really matters, you know.

  Charlie Sheen

  Eagles, Rocks, Singing

  Source: www.ericspitznagel.com

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• I want to be remembered as an artist that gave you a piece of me, as opposed to some surface bullshit. I just want to be remembered as a poet that was open and honest because I wake up every morning and I'm me.

  Drake

  Morning, Artist, Bullshit

  Interview with Mark Anthony Green, www.gq.com. November 11, 2011.

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• My songs were influenced not so much by poetry on the page but by poetry being recited by the poets who recited poems with jazz bands.

  Bob Dylan

  Song, Pages, Band

  Bob Dylan “The fiddler now upspoke: a collection of Bob Dylan's interviews, press conferences and the like from throughout the masters career”

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• Time sped. And the poet through sorrow Became like his suffering kind. Again he toiled over his poems To lighten the grief of his mind.

  Ella Wheeler Wilcox

  Appreciation, Grief, Mind

  Ella Wheeler Wilcox (2016). “Complete Poetical Works of Ella Wheeler Wilcox (Delphi Classics)”, p.1032, Delphi Classics

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• I'm not a poet. I'm not up onstage to get something off my chest. I'm making musical statements, or, most of the time, musical questions for people to figure out, and I'm not going to get in the way of that.

  Mike Patton

  People, Musical, Way

  The Believer interview, www.believermag.com. January 2013.

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• My mother actually left American in 1929 to be part of an alternative community of bohemians around her then father-in-law who was a well-known Greek poet. This group of people were living in this semi-Luddite reality and weaving their own clothes - proto-hippies in a way- -but around an artistic vision.

  Anne Waldman

  Mother, Father, Hippie

  "Interview with Anne Waldman: On All Kinds of Roads". Interview with Kurt Jacobsen, logosjournal.com. 2011.

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• When I was a kid I would write songs, little plays, and poetry in school. If you're an adult and you're a poet, it's all about love and pain, but if you're a kid it's, "Does anyone know a word that rhymes with shark?"

  Mike Birbiglia

  Funny, Song, Pain

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• It was a little harder when I first went to Egypt when I was 18 years old and being a white woman with a knapsack and in blue jeans. But again I was part of the rucksack revolution there was some grace there. You could put it that way. And confidence as well because I thought of myself as a poet. That was part of it. I was going for that, to have experiences to make the work.

  Anne Waldman

  Egypt, Blue, Years

  Source: logosjournal.com

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• How can you work on letting your thoughts go and getting synchronized into the moment and questioning your wild imagination. But I say just think of all the great Japanese and Chinese poets and scholars who were also meditators.

  Anne Waldman

  Thinking, Wild Imagination, Chinese

  Source: logosjournal.com

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