Latest Gerald Stern Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• Some poems are art because of their passion.

  Gerald Stern

  Art, Passion, Art Is

  Source: therumpus.net

• Men aren't called pricks, but women are called cunts.

  Gerald Stern

  Men

  Source: therumpus.net

• Teaching poetry, teaching as such, is worthy - if back breaking.

  Gerald Stern

  Teaching, Worthy, Ifs

  Source: therumpus.net

• The act of writing itself isn't outrageous. And the institution subtly and insidiously works on you in such a way that though you seem to have freedom you become a servant. Your main issue is to get promoted to the next thing. Or get invited to a picnic. Or get tenure. Or get laid.

  Gerald Stern

  Writing, Issues, Picnics

  Source: therumpus.net

• I was ruined before I got started. I say ruined, but I could say blessed; I was too far gone to believe in it. And I'm shocked how generation after generation repeats the behavior.

  Gerald Stern

  Blessed, Believe, Generations

  Source: therumpus.net

• I floundered in my twenties. Though I wore a long scarf. And when I got to be thirty I got a job at Temple University in Philadelphia. I worked there for seven years, and I finally got fired, mostly for political reasons.

  Gerald Stern

  Jobs, Years, Philadelphia

  Source: therumpus.net

• It's just that very few poets disturb the peace to any degree.

  Gerald Stern

  Degrees, Poet

  Source: therumpus.net

• I feel that my job, as an artist, is to disturb the peace. And to disturb it intellectually, linguistically, politically and literally.

  Gerald Stern

  Jobs, Artist, Feels

  Source: therumpus.net

• I've changed over my writing life. If I can generalize, I would say that the more recent poems - believe it or not - are more pointedly political; although, if the earlier poems were more existential, they were still political; though, in their own way, had a complicated presence.

  Gerald Stern

  Believe, Writing, Political

  Source: therumpus.net

• I've been active in a minor way compared to professional activists. I was a labor leader. I led two labor strikes. I've manipulated boards. I've led marches. I've done many things.

  Gerald Stern

  Two, Leader, Boards

  Source: therumpus.net

• I've been trying to come to terms with what I am and what I do and what I believe in. And I see that I'm not happy with - well, it's almost as if being a poet is not enough for me. It's too late for me to do more now. I did what I could in a small way. I did it as theater, too, to be honest.

  Gerald Stern

  Believe, Trying, Too Late

  Source: therumpus.net

• I've spent hundreds of hours working over words, and part of me, a large part of me, has a desire to do something else.

  Gerald Stern

  Desire, Hours

  Source: therumpus.net

• In America it's a particular problem. The artist, particularly the poet, is just unacknowledged; if I can use that dumb word. Maybe it has always been that way. Maybe the only way he or she can be acknowledged is to be connected with some movement, be it religious or political.

  Gerald Stern

  Religious, Artist, America

  Source: therumpus.net

• Tolstoy is one of the greatest artists in history, but he finally became infused with the idea of the uselessness of art. He gave himself to his own kind of religion.

  Gerald Stern

  Art, Ideas, Kind

  Source: therumpus.net

• The artist looks for a subject. You know, a lot of new poets don't seem to have a subject. I don't totally understand that.

  Gerald Stern

  Artist, Looks, Poet

  Source: therumpus.net

• There are hundreds of prisons - sexual, political, cultural. But being a prisoner also gives you impetus.

  Gerald Stern

  Giving, Political, Prison

  Source: therumpus.net

• Sometimes a person thinks he's attached to one thing and he's really attached to something else.

  Gerald Stern

  Thinking, Sometimes, Persons

  Source: therumpus.net

• You could be attached to merely a description of a plant or a flower. Or a narrative of an event. Or rage at injustice. Isaiah and the other Hebrew prophets, in their rage, were being altogether attached - not at all detached, although as I think of the word "detachment," I also think of a sheet of paper, loose from its notebook, fluttering around somewhere in the wind trying to find its home again.

  Gerald Stern

  Notebook, Flower, Home

  Source: therumpus.net

• Humor is not funny. Humor is something else. Funny is a joke, sometimes silly. Comedy is deep and connected to tragedy; comedy could be deeper than tragedy, in my view.

  Gerald Stern

  Silly, Views, Tragedy

  Source: therumpus.net

• Attachment has to do with suffering, so it's really close to Buddhism, because Buddhism wants to relieve you from suffering; you're supposed to escape from suffering.

  Gerald Stern

  Buddhism, Attachment, Suffering

  Source: therumpus.net

• For the Christian mystics, detachment meant to leave attachment so that God could enter you and take over completely and you could climb the ladder to their heaven. Kind of crazy, but what the hell?

  Gerald Stern

  Christian, Crazy, Attachment

  Source: therumpus.net

• If the Buddhist's job is to be detached, I think that the artist's job is to be both detached and attached.

  Gerald Stern

  Buddhist, Jobs, Artist

  Source: therumpus.net

• Maybe being an artist is a kind of detachment. You're in the cave, you're isolated, you're apart from everything and it's there you can find out what you believe in, or what is - what is the nature of being, as you see it.

  Gerald Stern

  Believe, Artist, Caves

  Source: therumpus.net

• The cave is a dark, shadowy place. It's a place that's very close and yet distant at the same time, and it's a place of revelation and isolation. Your form, your body, your writing is your confinement.

  Gerald Stern

  Writing, Dark, Caves

  Source: therumpus.net

• It's a kind of liberation to break free in language, if you can break free, but it's also a confinement, because form confines you - whatever the form.

  Gerald Stern

  Language, Kind, Break

  Source: therumpus.net