on poetry
July 19, 2018
“Formerly I believed books were made like this: a poet came, lightly opened his lips, and the inspired fool burst into song — if you please! But it seems, before they can launch a song, poets must tramp for days with callused feet, and the sluggish fish of the imagination flounders softly in the slush of the heart. And while, with twittering rhymes, they boil a broth of loves and nightingales, the tongueless street merely writhes for lack of something to shout or say.”
Vladimir Mayakovsky
July 19, 1893 – April 14, 1930
. . . . .
portrait of Vladimir Mayakovsky by Aleksandr Rodchenko
quote from The Bedbug and Selected Poetry
on poetry
July 7, 2018
“There’s a difference between writing about something and living through it.”
Margaret Walker
(July 7, 1915 – November 30, 1998)
. . . . .
photo
on poetry
June 24, 2018
“Never use the word ‘audience.’ The very idea of a public, unless the poet is writing for money, seems wrong to me. Poets don’t have an ‘audience’: They’re talking to a single person all the time.”
Robert Graves
(July 24, 1895 – December 7, 1985)
. . . . .
photo
on poetry
June 13, 2018
“As I walk, I construct perfect sentences that I cannot remember later at home. I don’t know if the ineffable poetry of those sentences derived from what they were or from their never having been (written).”
Fernando Pessoa
(June 13, 1888 – November 30, 1935)
. . . . .
quote: The Book of Disquiet
photo
on poetry
June 7, 2018
“I’m glad I understand that while language is a gift, listening is a responsibility.”
Nikki Giovanni
(b. June 7, 1943)
on poetry
May 29, 2018
“Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.”
G.K. Chesterton
(May 29, 1874 – June 14, 1936)
. . . . .
photo by Ernest Herbert Mills, 1909
quote
on poetry
May 18, 2018
“But the fact is that writing is the only way in which I am able to cope with the memories which overwhelm me so frequently and so unexpectedly.”
W.G. Sebald
(May 18, 1944 – December 14, 2001)
. . . . .
photo
quote: The Rings of Saturn
