Sam Hamill Quotes - Page 2

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• I haven't seen any poet in this country behave nearly as rudely as Newt Gingrich or Bill O'Reilly. I'm not asking these people to approve of everyone's manners. I don't feel obliged to defend the manners of every poet who submits a poem to my web site. That's not my job. My job is to provide them with an opportunity to speak from the heart. If there's not much in the heart and if the mouth is running wild, that's not my problem.

  Sam Hamill

  Running, Country, Jobs

  Interview with Anne-Marie Cusac, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. March 31, 2003.

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• Of course, there are some people who behave rudely. Allen Ginsberg used to like to get up in public and take his clothes off. I don't do that, but I liked Allen Ginsberg. He was a nice guy.

  Sam Hamill

  Nice, Clothes, People

  Interview with Anne-Marie Cusac, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. March 31, 2003.

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• Ho Kyuns poetry is in the tradition of his master, the incomparable Tu Fu, while remaining fully his own. Writing nine centuries later, Hos poetry strikes many parallels--the experiences of war and exile and constant struggle-- and his voice is similarly humane. This is rich and enlightening reading.

  Sam Hamill

  War, Reading, Struggle

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• One of the things I love about translation is it obliterates the self. When I'm trying to figure out what Tu Fu has to say, I have to kind of impersonate Tu Fu. I have to take on, if you will, his voice and his skin in English, and I have to try to get as deeply into the poem as possible. I'm not trying to make an equivalent poem in English, which can't be done because our language can't accommodate the kind of metaphors within metaphors the Chinese written language can, and often does, contain.

  Sam Hamill

  Voice, Self, Chinese

  Interview with Anne-Marie Cusac, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. March 31, 2003.

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• I'll say that this is probably the best time for poetry since the T'ang dynasty. All the rest of the world is going to school on American poetry in the twentieth century, from Ezra Pound to W. S. Merwin, and for very good reason. We have soaked up influence in the last century like a sponge. It's cross-pollination, first law of biology, that the more variety you have the more health you have.

  Sam Hamill

  School, Law, Dynasty

  Interview with Anne-Marie Cusac, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. March 31, 2003.

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• We poets don't tend to be certain a lot. Much of our art is made out of our own uncertainty. And there is a not-knowingness, I think, that leads us back to suffering humanity with a more compassionate vision than most of our politicians have.

  Sam Hamill

  Art, Thinking, Humanity

  Interview with Anne-Marie Cusac, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. March 31, 2003.

  4 Copy quote

• I think a lot of American poets are swimming-pool Soviets. A lot of them have taken the comfortable, self-protective route too often. I know that I certainly have. That's easy to do.

  Sam Hamill

  Taken, Swimming, Thinking

  Interview with Anne-Marie Cusac, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. March 31, 2003.

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• I got interested in Zen when I was a teenage beatnik on the streets of San Francisco. And it was my interest in Zen, in part, that got me into the Marine Corps, because that was a ticket to Asia. So I spent a couple of years on Okinawa and began reading and thinking about how I wanted to go about conducting my life.

  Sam Hamill

  Couple, Teenage, Reading

  Interview with Anne-Marie Cusac, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. March 31, 2003.

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• I can remember, I think it was 1967, sitting in the First Unitarian Church in Isla Vista, Santa Barbara, and seeing Phil Levine come out on the little stage. He sat on the edge and said, "You know, sometimes it's hard not to hate my country for the way I feel, at times, but I won't let that happen." And then he read, "They Feed They Lion," this incredibly powerful, incantatory poem that was inspired in part by the burning of Detroit in 1967 and the riots that followed.

  Sam Hamill

  Country, Powerful, Hate

  Interview with Anne-Marie Cusac, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. March 31, 2003.

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• All I'd ever heard my entire life in my family was, "Nobody wanted you, and we took you in." When you get that into your head at a tender age, you really feel like you are an unlovable human being, and then you behave like one. That's exactly what I had done. It took me many years to deal with my own violence and find my own niche.

  Sam Hamill

  Years, Age, Done

  Interview with Anne-Marie Cusac, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. March 31, 2003.

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• I would say that my great political awakening was really born on Okinawa, reading Albert Camus: the "Neither Victims nor Executioners" essay and The Rebel. I was an eighteen-year-old kid. I hated myself. I hated my life. I thought nobody wanted me.

  Sam Hamill

  Reading, Kids, Years

  Interview with Anne-Marie Cusac, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. March 31, 2003.

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• Each of us as poets, as decent suffering human beings, has to find a way to run our lives that is compassionate toward one another and toward our environment.

  Sam Hamill

  Running, Suffering, Way

  Interview with Anne-Marie Cusac, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. March 31, 2003.

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• I'm a poet who practices Zen. And it's not, I'm somebody who practices Zen who writes poetry. There's no separation for me.

  Sam Hamill

  Writing, Practice, Separation

  Interview with Anne-Marie Cusac, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. March 31, 2003.

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