Quotes About Poetry

I think that all my books are political, I think that I have a political body of work. I am essentially a political woman, but above all I am a poet. I am a poetess.

If it doesn't work horizontally as prose... it probably won't work any better vertically pretending to be poetry.

As a prose writer, I work with language; and those who work with language turn to poetry for renewal.

I read a lot. I liked a tremendous number of poets and writers. The person whose work I liked the most was Joyce.

People want poetry. They need poetry. They get it. They don't want fancy work.

Personally I always feel like I could use a little more of poetry apothegmatic power in my own work but we're always lacking something.

I like poetry when I don't quite understand why I like it. Poetry isn't just a question of wrapping something up and giving it to someone else to unwrap. It just doesn't work like that.

As for how criticism of Keats' poetry relates to criticism of my own work, I'll leave that for others to decide.

I used to joke that if acting didn't work out, poetry was my commonsense fallback.

Some to conceit alone their taste confine, And glittering thoughts struck out at ev'ry line; Pleas'd with a work where nothing's just or fit; One glaring chaos and wild heap of wit.

Reading poetry and reading the great works of the canon that we were reading in the '60s and the '70s and '80s was mind altering.

I fell in love with social work, and that was my undoing as a poet.

Place is extremely important to my work because I am always pulling landscape imagery into my poems.

My days are filled with work I love - reading poems, writing poems, talking with people about poems, teaching, directing a writing program, hosting readings, etc.

PC stuff just lowers the general acceptance of good work and replaces it with bogus poetry that celebrates values that in themselves are probably quite worthy.

As flames do work and wind when they ascend, So did I weave myself into the sense.

If anything, hearing another poet is a sacred experience I enter, but I can honestly say this does not influence my own work.

I've thought of the last line of some poems for years and tried them out, It wouldn't work because the last line was much too beautiful for the poem.

Poems' deep work is a matter of language, but also a matter of life. One part of that work is to draw into our awareness and into language itself the unobvious and the unexpected.

Poems are always interested in what Ivan Illich called 'shadow work,' not least because that is no small part of their own way of working.

I often use official documents or bureaucratic forms within my work. I find their structure and language style leaves a lot of room for poetry and my own interpretation.

I work very hard on all my poems, but most of the work consists of trying not to sound as if I had worked. I try to make them sound as natural as possible, but within a quite strict form, which to my ears has a lot to do with musical rhythm and sound.

A Herd of Turtles' is the only song on 'Behold Electric Guitar' that is not strictly instrumental. But instead of singing, I am reciting a poem. My poem is about overcoming challenges.

Sometimes, I think the best kind of poem is one in which there is an acute balance between what is humorous and that which is very serious. That balance is very hard to strike. But it can be done.