on poetry

“Poetry is for the inner ear.”
Vachel Lindsay
(November 10, 1879 – December 5, 1931)

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quoted in A Poet in America by Edgar Lee Masters

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on poetry

“Every authentic poem contributes to the labor of poetry… to bring together what life has separated or violence has torn apart… Poetry can repair no loss, but it defies the space which separates. And it does this by its continual labor of reassembling what has been scattered.”
John Berger
(November 5, 1926 – January 2, 2017)

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quote from The Sense of Sight

on poetry

“Truth, acceptance of the truth, is a shattering experience. It shatters the binding shroud of culture trance. It rips apart smugness, arrogance, superiority, and self-importance. It requires acknowledgment of responsibility for the nature and quality of each of our own lives, our own inner lives as well as the life of the world. Truth, inwardly accepted, humbling truth, makes one vulnerable. You can’t be right, self-righteous, and truthful at the same time.”
Paula Gunn Allen
(October 24, 1939 – May 29, 2008)

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on poetry

“Language excites me. Irrational thought excites me. I spend most of my time listening instead of writing. A shard of language might come: a phrase, a word, an anagram, and I’d just keep it in my pocket, like a little seed, warming in my fist.”
Ocean Vuong
(b. October 14, 1988)

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photo by Tom Hines

on poetry

“Teach this poem to forgive itself, so it will stop beating me up from the inside.”
Ryler Dustin
(b. September 11)

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on poetry

“Words were her plague and words were her redemption.”

H.D.
(September 10, 1886 – September 27, 1961)

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on poetry

“If we’re going to solve the problems of the world, we have to learn how to talk to one another. Poetry is the language at its essence. It’s the bones and the skeleton of the language. It teaches you, if nothing else, how to choose your words.”
Rita Dove
(b. August 28, 1952)

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photo by Fred Viebahn