Quotes from Denise Duhamel

Unlike Woody Allen, I would be happy to be part of any (poetry) club that would have me.

I started wanting desperately to say something, to make a point, to be heard - and I still feel that way. Free verse served me best when I embarked on poetry.

After my marriage ended, I had an urge to skip that part of my life completely in terms of poetry, not publish anything at all about it.

Jean Valentine and Jane Cooper were my professors at Sarah Lawrence College - and they were uncompromised in their art. They gave me models of how to live one's life as a poet.

I am open to squeezing in whatever I can in this wonderful life. Instead of asking, "Is that all there is?" I seem, lately, to be always saying, "Wow!"

What has stayed true in my life as a writer is my dedication to writing - I try to write every day, no matter what - and the joy that writing has given me.

Writing is performative - and while, yes, the words in essence will be there "forever," poems are often about ecstatic moments rather than trying to pin down a particular truth of an event.

I love going to movie theaters, even in the era of movies on-demand and Netflix. When you are in a movie theater, no one can reach you by phone or other means.

The spoken word community was significant in making me want to write accessible and urgent poems. Bob Holman, in particular, was an impressive figure.

My advice to my younger self would have been, "Chill. Concentrate on the poems. Everything else will work itself out."

I still write what I need to write - but I can't deny that something has changed when I think about sending work out. Maybe it's just growing older and feeling more responsible to the world.

I know writers for whom the act of writing is a necessary chore. They suffer to write great work. I am very lucky that for me writing is a delight.

Visual media is the dominant art form in our present day culture, whereas poetry is, at best, a proxy. Yet poetry and film are both "dream factories."

Buddhist Barbie In the 5th century B.C. an Indian philosopher Gautama teaches All is emptiness and There is no self. In the 20th century A.D. Barbie agrees, but wonders how a man with such a belly could pose, smiling, and without a shirt.

I will be gone, but I will miss you if I'm still able to miss anything, that is, if some particle of me remains and some particle of you.