on poetry
September 12, 2022
“The Atlantic turned down 2 of my best poems — upset for I had wanted them to be so good that even people who didn’t like poetry would feel that this was real, was good. I must write desperately, now or never, putting my finest, my most secret self into them. I must build a monument against time. And all this must be done with no thought, no hope, of fame, of publication, but in the hope that something out of it, say 3 poems out of a hundred, will be worth something, will deserve to endure, will prove that my life was not useless.”
Marya Zaturenska
(September 12, 1902 – January 19, 1982)
on poetry
September 1, 2022
“I’m not an extraordinary worker, I’m an extraordinary daydreamer. I exceed all my fantasies — even that of writing.”
Blaise Cendrars
(September 1, 1887 – January 21, 1961)
. . . . .
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on poetry
August 20, 2022
“The antagonism between the poet and the politician has generally been evident in all cultures.”
Salvatore Quasimodo
(August 20, 1901 – June 14, 1968)
. . . . .
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on poetry
August 5, 2022
“There are some brightnesses which are stationary and static, but a poem, like a bird, must fly.”
José Garcia Villa
(August 5, 1908 – February 7, 1997)
on poetry
August 1, 2022
“For as long as I was trying not to write poems — and I spent years trying not to write them, and throwing my energy into dumb things — my life was having none of it. I was stuck. I was getting spiritual pushback. Everything I planned was being dashed to pieces, because I had work to do that I wasn’t doing. But when I started to write, things settled for me.”
Lorna Goodison
(b. August 1, 1947)
. . . . .
photo by Hugh Wright & quote
on poetry
July 27, 2022
“There’s no posterity to write for. I’m writing now for mutated arthropods.”
Peter Reading
(July 27, 1946 – November 17, 2011)
on poetry
July 5, 2022
“I often use outside material as part of my creative process: my M.O. is to begin with language or bits of information (story or ‘fact’) and see where it leads me. For these science-inspired poems I am most often led back to the human being where my own obsessions emerge — and often circle around the exploration of sexuality and yes, the monstrous.”
Kimiko Hahn
(b. July 5, 1955)
on poetry
June 20, 2022
“I write something every day. It might be a line of a poem. It might be a line of a song. It might be a sentence of a lecture. It might be a response to a question. Each takes a long time. I have no facility with language. I work hard at every sentence. Including this one. I’m still working on it!”
Paul Muldoon
(b. June 20, 1951)
on poetry
June 16, 2022
“I have forced myself to begin writing when I’ve been utterly exhausted, when I’ve felt my soul as thin as a playing card…and somehow the activity of writing changes everything.”
Joyce Carol Oates
(b. June 16, 1938)
on poetry
June 10, 2022
“In 2011, I keep hearing that poetry is irrelevant, and there certainly isn’t much market for it. That doesn’t scare me. Poetry, grounded in the perception of endings, enjambment, and disjunction, is both a defiance of authority and a deposit from a future yet to come.”
Susan Howe
(b. June 10, 1937)
. . . . .
photo by Nina Subin
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The Poetry Department . . . aka The Boynton Blog 