“High and low culture come together in all Post Modern art, and American poetry is not excluded from this.”
Topic
poetry
850 quotes
Quotes, most loved first
“I definitely wish to distinguish American poetry from British or other English language poetry.”
“Still, language is resilient, and poetry when it is pressured simply goes underground.”
“Because, in fact, women, feminists, do read my poetry, and they read it often with the power of their political interpretation. I don't care that's what poetry is supposed to do.”
“I'm perfectly happy when I look out at an audience and it's all women. I always think it's kind of odd, but then, more women than men, I think, read and write poetry.”
“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.”
“Distinctly American poetry is usually written in the context of one's geographic landscape, sometimes out of one's cultural myths, and often with reference to gender and race or ethnic origins.”
“From reading a previous answer, you know that I consider all those aspects to be part of American cultural myth and thus they figure into good American poetry, whether the poet is aware of what he is doing or not.”
“I don't like political poetry, and I don't write it. If this question was pointing towards that, I think it is missing the point of the American tradition, which is always apolitical, even when the poetry comes out of politically active writers.”
“I have always wanted what I have now come to call the voice of personal narrative. That has always been the appealing voice in poetry. It started for me lyrically in Shakespeare's sonnets.”
“I think I'm a very good reader of poetry, but obviously, like everybody, I have a set of criteria for reading poems, and I'm not shy about presenting them, so if people ask for my critical response to a poem, I tell them what works and why, and what doesn't work and why.”
“I think that great poetry is the most interesting and complex use of the poet's language at that point in history, and so it's even more exciting when you read a poet like Yeats, almost 100 years old now, and you think that perhaps no one can really top that.”
“Poetry is, first and last, language - the rest is filler.”
“Poetry is something that happens in universities, in creative writing programs or in English departments.”
“I would say that American poetry has always been a poetry of personal testimony.”
“I think the best American poetry is the poetry that utilizes the resources of poetry rather than exploits the defects or triumphs of the poet's personality.”
“I certainly can't speak for all cultures or all societies, but it's clear that in America, poetry serves a very marginal purpose. It's not part of the cultural mainstream.”
“I believe that all poetry is formal in that it exists within limits, limits that are either inherited by tradition or limits that language itself imposes.”
“And yet, in a culture like ours, which is given to material comforts, and addicted to forms of entertainment that offer immediate gratification, it is surprising that so much poetry is written.”
“And at least in poetry you should feel free to lie. That is, not to lie, but to imagine what you want, to follow the direction of the poem.”
“A life is not sufficiently elevated for poetry, unless, of course, the life has been made into an art.”
“A great many people seem to think writing poetry is worthwhile, even though it pays next to nothing and is not as widely read as it should be.”
“I published, privately, a collection of my serious poetry I had written over the years. I only published 50 copies, which I gave to friends, in a special deluxe edition. It was ridiculously expensive but I'm glad that I did it.”
“Well, the great thing for me about poetry is that in good poems the dislocation of words, that is to say, the distance between what they say they're saying and what they are actually saying is at its greatest.”