Gerald Stern Quotes

Quotes about:

• 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

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• All of a sudden I understand why I like Aliki Barnstones poems so much. They remind me of the one she has studied most - shall we call her her master - Emily Dickinson. Not in the forms, not, as such, in the music, and not in the references; but in that weird intimacy, that eerie closeness, that absolute confession of soul.... In Barnstone, too, the two worlds are intensely present, and the voice moves back and forth between them. She has the rare art of distance and closeness. It gives her her fine music, her wisdom, her form. She is a fine poet.

  Gerald Stern

  Art, Distance, Moving

  5 Copy quote

• I will look at the footprints going in and out of the water and dream up a small blue good to talk to.

  Gerald Stern

  Dream, Journey, Hiking

  Gerald Stern (1981). “The red coal: poems”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH)

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• Political means so many things. We are political willy-nilly. Political poetry is an easy invitation to disaster. But then so is love poetry. But we are a little more patient with bad love poetry.

  Gerald Stern

  Mean, Political, Littles

  Source: therumpus.net

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  10 Copy quote

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

  Gerald Stern

  Giving, Political, Prison

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• If you don't have a bed, or a dresser or a wall, or a book or a toy you are oppressed. An African American in a white world. A Jew in a Christian world. A gypsy. A Native American. A Chinese American. Let's say, you were born deprived.

  Gerald Stern

  Christian, Wall, Book

  Source: therumpus.net

  7 Copy quote

• Oppressed cultures often envy those which are not, or oppressed individuals do, and sometimes those which - and who - are not envy those which - who - are.

  Gerald Stern

  Envy, Culture, Sometimes

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• I have left out what I don't remember or don't know. Temperament, fear, shyness, obedience, kindness.

  Gerald Stern

  Kindness, Remember, Shyness

  Source: therumpus.net

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  7 Copy quote

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

  Gerald Stern

  Men

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• Oppressed persons, oppressed cultures, tend to be more political, obviously, as are those with a rage for justice, or the crazy messianic desire.

  Gerald Stern

  Crazy, Justice, Political

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

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

  Gerald Stern

  Degrees, Poet

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

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