Quotes About Identity

I am a reflection of my mother's secret poetry as well as of her hidden angers

The poetry is myself.

Proper names are poetry in the raw. Like all poetry they are untranslatable.

I am not a painter. I am a poet. / Why? I think I would rather be / a painter, but I am not.

Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought. The farthest horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems, carved from the rock experiences of our daily lives.

American poetry is always about defining oneself individually,claiming one's right to be different and often to break taboos.

The poetry, if you will, of life is reduced to this sort of dry, scientific, you know, it's the worst sort of précis of who we are.

Poetry gave me back my voice.

My poetry definitely comes out of a female body.

I don't create poetry, I create myself, for me my poems are a way to me.

So far as I am concerned, poetry and every other art was, is, and forever will be strictly and distinctly a question of individuality.

Blood was its Avatar and its seal.

America was based on a poetic vision. What will happen when it loses its poetry?

My words are the garment of what I shall never be Like the tucked sleeve of a one-armed boy.

I have always loved American poetry, which is very different from Irish poetry.

My verses are my diary. My poetry is a poetry of proper names.

Most people can't tell now who wrote what. I like that blurring of identities within the band. because it becomes a unified thing that can't be related to other forms of historical poetry

Happy World Poetry Day: 'The American identity has never been a singular one and the voices of poets invariably sing, in addition to their own, the voices of those around them.

That's the main business of the poem!-to see if you can't make up a language that sets all your selves talking at once-all of them being fair to each other.

Poems are ways of saying you clearly remember the day of your death and your tomb. When I am writing poetry, I relive my days when a woman inside me dies many times.

Don't you think that as a people, Americans have less poetry, real poetry, in their souls than any other nations?

Poems are my link with the times, with the new life of my people.

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

Poetry connects you to yourself, to the self that doesn't know how to talk or negotiate.