 And at least in poetry you should feel free to lie. That is, not to lie, but to imagine what you want, to follow the direction of the poem. |
| 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. |
| I believe that all poetry is formal in that it exists within limits, limits that are either inherited by tradition or limits that language itself imposes. |
| I tend to like poems that engage me - that is to say, which do not bore me. |
| It's very hard to write humor. |
| A great many people seem to think writing poetry is worthwhile, even though it pays next to nothing and is not as widely read as it should be. |
| Poetry is something that happens in universities, in creative writing programs or in English departments. |
| Pain is filtered in a poem so that it becomes finally, in the end, pleasure. |
| Each moment is a place you've never been. |
| The number of people writing poems is vast, and their reasons for doing so are many, that much can be surmised from the stacks of submissions. |
| It hardly seems worthwhile to point out the shortsightedness of those practitioners who would have us believe that the form of the poem is merely its shape. |
| And Robert Lowell, of course - in his poems, we're not located in his actual life. We're located more in the externals, in the journalistic facts of his life. |
| Poetry is, first and last, language - the rest is filler. |
| From the reader's view, a poem is more demanding than prose. |
| A life is not sufficiently elevated for poetry, unless, of course, the life has been made into an art. |
| There's a certain point, when you're writing autobiographical stuff, where you don't want to misrepresent yourself. It would be dishonest. |
| But I tend to think of the expressive part of me as rather tedious - never curious or responsive, but blind and self-serving. |
| Usually a life turned into a poem is misrepresented. |
| Nothing is the destiny of everyone, it is our commonness made dumb. |
| The future is always beginning now. |
