James Arthur Quotes - Page 2

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• I think that being mindful of your own biases tends to lead you into ambiguity, not clarity, and that following those ambiguities is the only way to approach the universal.

  James Arthur

  Thinking, Clarity, Ambiguity

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I believe strongly in what John Keats called negative capability: the trait or practice that allows a poet to remain in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason. For Keats, William Shakespeare exemplified negative capability, and I do think it's extraordinary that for all the thousands of pages Shakespeare left behind, we really don't know much about Shakespeare's own personality or opinions.

  James Arthur

  Believe, Thinking, Personality

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• William Shakespeare tried hard to see every facet of every question, probably because he was more interested in questions than in answers. That's a big part of what makes him great, in my opinion.

  James Arthur

  Opinion

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I wrote the poems in Charms Against Lightning one by one, over almost a decade, and I did not write them toward any theme or narrative. But once I really got serious about putting together a book, I began to see that in fact there were themes across the poems, if only because my own obsessions had brought me back time and again to the same ground. I realized that any ordering of the poems would determine how those themes developed over the manuscript, and how the collection's dramatic conflicts were resolved.

  James Arthur

  Book, Writing, Together

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I don't think I did write any poems to fill narrative gaps. Not consciously, anyway. As much as possible, I try to discover my poems' subject matter through the act of writing, instead of deciding ahead of time what my poems will be about.

  James Arthur

  Writing, Thinking, Trying

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I want each poem to be ambiguous enough that its meaning can shift, depending on the reader's own frame of reference, and depending on the reader's mood. That's why negative capability matters; if the poet stops short of fully controlling each poem's meaning, the reader can make the poem his or her own.

  James Arthur

  Negative, Poet, Mood

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I'm a mix; I'm sure some of my Canadian friends find me very American, both in person and on the page.

  James Arthur

  Find Me

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Whenever I visit my family in Canada, I remind myself that what many Americans would consider forthright, many Canadians would consider overbearing.

  James Arthur

  My Family

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• It is hard to compare cultures without overgeneralizing, but I think a lot of American poetry has an assertiveness - an upbeat quality - that's less typical of Canadian poetry. Of course there are poets in both countries to whom that generalization does not apply. Speaking broadly, I'd describe Canadians as being a bit more reserved than Americans. Not less opinionated - just less direct.

  James Arthur

  Country, Thinking, Quality

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I can't read my poem "Distracted by an Ergonomic Bicycle" without thinking of Seattle, where the events of the poem took place, and I can't read "In Defense of the Semicolon" without thinking of Toronto - but why should that matter to anyone else? If another reader imagines "In Defense of the Semicolon" taking place in New Orleans, great.

  James Arthur

  Thinking, Imagine, Distracted

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I do consider myself Canadian, but I feel American, too. I've spent more than fifteen years in each of the two countries, so really I just think of myself as a dual citizen, which is what I am. Thankfully, I've never been forced to choose!

  James Arthur

  Country, Thinking

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• When I'm most deeply involved in my writing, sometimes I do dream about poetry, and occasionally I wake up from a dream with a phrase that I like well enough to put it in a poem.

  James Arthur

  Dream, Writing, Wake Up

  "Poetry As a Way of Thinking: An Interview with James Arthur". Interview with Emilia Phillips, www.32poems.com.

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• My dad, a mathematician, raised me to believe that mathematics is beautiful, so math is a part of my imaginative terrain. In my late 20s I wrote several 11-line poems because I wanted to create poems that couldn't be uniformly divided into couplets, tercets, or quatrains, 11 being a prime number.

  James Arthur

  Beautiful, Dad, Believe

  "Poetry As a Way of Thinking: An Interview with James Arthur". Interview with Emilia Phillips, www.32poems.com.

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• Maybe because I can't even put together an IKEA desk, I've never been tempted to think of my own poems as built objects - but I do sometimes imagine them as mathematical constructs.

  James Arthur

  Thinking, Ikea, Together

  "Poetry As a Way of Thinking: An Interview with James Arthur". Interview with Emilia Phillips, www.32poems.com.

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• I like poems that immediately claim my attention, instead of taking my attention for granted. At first read, I want to feel compelled to pick up the poem again; I want to be curious about its byways and secret corners.

  James Arthur

  Secret, Attention, Want

  "Poetry As a Way of Thinking: An Interview with James Arthur". Interview with Emilia Phillips, www.32poems.com.

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• I want to reiterate that my understanding of the poem is not the poem's core, true meaning. Once a poem goes out into the world, the poet is just one more reader.

  James Arthur

  Understanding, World, Poet

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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