on poetry
January 20, 2021
“try to put the poetry in the language that we speak, to use that language, take those simple words and make out of them something that is moving, that is powerful, that is there.”
Pat Parker
(January 20, 1944 – June 17, 1989)
on poetry
January 15, 2021
“I really do sincerely feel that bewilderment is at the core of every great poem, and in order to be bewildered, you have to be able to wonder. You absolutely have to be permeable to wonder.”
Kaveh Akbar
(b. January 15, 1989)
. . . . .
photo by Hieu Minh Nguyen
quote
on poetry
January 7, 2021
“What I love about drafts is the experimental nature of them. The draft is what you know about writing a poem running up against what you don’t know about the subject. If you’re lucky, you get to surprise yourself.”
Cornelius Eady
(b. January 7, 1954)
. . . . .
photo by Chip Cooper
quote
on poetry
January 1, 2021
“The future poem will be — indeed is already being — genetically modified to include sound and moving image, locative media, interactivity and new interfaces. I’m not yet enough of a codger to bemoan these changes, though the condensed and lyrical stanza seems to me a perfect technology, a zen bomb born in a word bud, dense enough to disrupt the waves of textual white noise that pass through our brains at any given moment.”
Ravi Shankar
(b. January 1, 1975)
. . . . .
quote
on poetry
December 30, 2020
“Times like these are times when people often do turn to poetry. When without words otherwise, we hope to find something akin to how we feel in the ways words are in poems.”on poetry
December 23, 2020
“Poets sing our human music for us.”
Carol Ann Duffy
(b. December 23, 1955)
. . . . .
photo by Jemima Kuhfeld
on poetry
December 10, 2020
“I have been asking myself to be more attentive & porous — to pay attention to the way every inch of me is animal, every inch of me is earth. I am trying to remember this. Where is my cloud? Where is my sea? What do the lungs hunt? What does the eye have in common with the teeth?”
Aracelis Girmay
(b. December 10, 1977)
. . . . .
photo by Sheila Griffin
quote
on poetry
December 4, 2020
“I work on a poem until it’s finished, which is when I perform it. That’s when it’s fixed. And I perform it for a while if it’s good. I keep performing it. If it’s not, I let go of it, and I never bother with it again.”
John Giorno
(December 4, 1936 – October 11, 2019)
on poetry
November 27, 2020
“I am trying to imagine language without light, as though I wanted to understand how things were before language, when, deep in the throat, syllables and vowels were not yet organized and it was necessary to tilt one’s head back to allow sounds to fly through the open air, terrifying, guttural or strident.”
Nicole Brossard
(b. November 27, 1943)
. . . . .
photo
quote: Fences in Breathing
on poetry
November 18, 2020
“Richard Hugo taught me that anyone with a desire to write, an ear for language and a bit of imagination could become a writer. He also, in a way, gave me permission to write about northern Montana.”
James Welch
(November 18, 1940 – August 4, 2003)
. . . . .
photo by Lee Nye
