Quotes About Authenticity

Don't be someone else's slogan because you are poetry.

To me, poetry is somebody standing up, so to speak, and saying, with as little concealment as possible, what it is for him or her to be on earth at this moment

My poetry is a game. My life is a game. But I am not a game.

Bad poetry is caused by people who sit down and think, Now I am going to write a Poem.

A poet must discover that it's his own story that is true, even if the truth is small indeed.

You must be careful not to deprive the poem of its wild origin.

Babies are not brought by storks and poets are not produced by workshops.

We love the things we love for what they are.

Poetry's role is to provide spontaneous individual candor as distinct from manipulation and brainwash.

Best believe that needle hurt you Best to see these true colors Than follow one of your false virtues A little secret to make you think: Why is the crazy stuff we never say, poetry in ink?

Poetry is the one thing that isn't contaminated, the one thing that isn't part of the game.

When a man talks from his heart, in his moment of truth, he speaks poetry.

I didn't write my poems because I wanted to, they were wrung from me. I had to write them.

When in public poetry should take off its clothes and wave to the nearest person in sight; it should be seen in the company of thieves and lovers rather than that of journalists and publishers.

I didn't really like confessional poetry or things. They seemed sort of dated to me, or just corny.

All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling. To be natural is to be obvious, and to be obvious is to be inartistic.

Poetry either pulses with real life or it's just an aborted simulacra. There's no middle ground.

I would say my life experiences are my poetry, whether I'm writing about those actual, factual experiences or not.

I don't want to bury anything in poetry.

The beauty of reality-based art - art underwritten by reality hunger - is that it's perfectly situated between life itself and (unattainable) "life as art".

It is fatal to decide, intellectually, what good poetry is because you are then in honour bound to try to write it, instead of the poems that only you can write.

How wide is all this long pretense! There is in love a sweetness ready penned, Copy out only that, and save expense.

To write at the same temperature at which I live I should write nothing but poetry.

Bad, quirky poetry might be better than some of the good stuff, because it really comes from the heart.