“A poem in form still has to have voice, gesture, a sense of discovery, a metaphoric connection, as any poetry does.”
Poetry“The great watershed of modern poetry is French, more than English.”
Poetry“A poem in form still has to have voice, gesture, a sense of discovery, a metaphoric connection, as any poetry does.”
Poetry“Teaching writing over the years intrudes on your own writing in important ways, taking away some of the excitement of poetry.”
Poetry“The Language Poets are writing only about language itself. The Ashbery poets are writing only about poetry itself. That seems to me a kind of dead end.”
Poetry“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.”
Poetry“I don't think the creative writing industry has helped American poetry.”
Poetry“Some people swear by writing courses, but whether it really helps American poetry, I have doubts.”
Poetry“The decision to write in prose instead of poetry is made more by the readers than by writers. Almost no one is interested in reading narrative in verse.”
Poetry“Among the American contemporaries I read with most enjoyment are several North Carolinians. I think the best poetry being written these days is being written by Southerners.”
Poetry“I think that it's more likely that in my 60s and 70s I will be writing poetry rather than fiction.”
Poetry“The great watershed of modern poetry is French, more than English.”
Poetry“Pound's translation of Chinese poetry was maybe the most important thing I read. Eliot a little bit later.”
Poetry“The young people have MTV and rock and roll. Why would they go to read poetry? Poetry belongs to the Stone Age. It awakens in us perceptions that go back to those times.”
Age“One of the most powerful devices of poetry is the use of distortions. You can go from talking about the way a minute passes to the way a century passes, or a lifetime.”
Poetry“Poetry, almost by definition, calls attention to its language and form.”
Poetry“If a poem is not memorable, there's probably something wrong. One of the problems of free verse is that much of the free verse poetry is not memorable.”
Poetry“The fact that something is in a rhymed form or in blank verse will not make it good poetry.”
Poetry“Philip Larkin has a tough honesty and sense of humor that I find irresistible, as a contemporary poet.”
Humor“In the later books I am much more at home in the use of language to describe things. I had never thought of that until a critic pointed that out.”
Home“Alchemy is the art of far and near, and I think poetry is alchemy in that way. It's delightful to distort size, to see something that's tiny as though it were vast.”
Art“I love to compare different time frames. Poetry can evoke the time of the subject. By a very careful choice of words you can evoke an era, completely throw the poem into a different time scale.”
Poetry