American Poetry Quotes

• Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion.

  T. S. Eliot

  Poetry, Personality, Individual Talent

  The Sacred Wood "Tradition and the Individual Talent" (1920)

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• Do not go gentle into that good night.

  Dylan Thomas

  Tattoo, Good Night, Goodnight

  "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" l. 16 (1952)

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• I definitely wish to distinguish American poetry from British or other English language poetry.

  Diane Wakoski

  Wish, Language, British

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• I was very interested in American poetry for many years. Much less now.

  Norman MacCaig

  Years, Literature

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• 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.

  Mark Strand

  Thinking, Personality, Triumph

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• I would say that American poetry has always been a poetry of personal testimony.

  Mark Strand

  Testimony

  "In the Presence of America: A Conversation with Mark Strand". Interview with Katharine Coles, weberstudies.weber.edu. 1992.

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• Someone said, in a simplistic way maybe, that all American poetry is either cooked or raw, and if it's cooked, it comes from Poe.

  Frederic Tuten

  Way, Said, Poetry Is

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• High and low culture come together in all Post Modern art, and American poetry is not excluded from this.

  Diane Wakoski

  Art, Together, Culture

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• I have always loved American poetry, which is very different from Irish poetry.

  Eavan Boland

  Different

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• I'm educating myself more about world poetry. I know a lot about contemporary American poetry, so I felt I needed to learn more about figures like Borges, Akhmatova, Neruda, etc. I felt I needed a bigger lens to see poetry through. It really helps to see poetry as a world language, and not just something American.

  Allison Joseph

  Etc, Lenses, World

  Source: lunchticket.org

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• Probably the high-watermark of [Bob] Dylan's career came after he plugged in his guitar ("Judas!" one fan shouted during a concert) and exploded American poetry, combining Beat aesthetics, psychedelic imagery, collage techniques.

  Jay Michaelson

  Guitar, Careers, Technique

  Source: www.thedailybeast.com

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• 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.

  Diane Wakoski

  Race, Landscape, Sometimes

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• What I discerned in the U.S. was a convergence of poetic voices coming from many different rents in the social fabric, many cultures, many tributaries, which, together, make up the American poetry of the late twentieth century.

  Adrienne Rich

  Voice, Together, Different

  Source: criticalflame.org

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• I teach a lecture course on American poetry to as many as 150 students. For a lot of them, its their only elective, so this is their one shot. Theyll take the Russian Novel or American Poetry, so I want to give them the high points, the inescapable poets.

  Robert Hass

  Giving, Want, Lectures

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• Twentieth-century American poetry has been one of the glories of modern literature.

  Helen Vendler

  Literature, Glory, Modern

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• 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.

  Diane Wakoski

  Reading, Answers, Literature

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• American poetry is always about defining oneself individually,claiming one's right to be different and often to break taboos.

  Diane Wakoski

  Different, Literature, Defining

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• Robert Creeley has forged a signature style in American poetry, an idiosyncratic, highly elliptical, syntactical compression by which the character of his mind’s concentrated and stumbling proposals might be expressed … Reading his poems, we experience the gnash of arriving through feeling at thought and word.

  Forrest Gander

  Reading, Character, Feelings

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• The Astonishment Tapes will now take its place within the growing field of international research about postwar American poetry's important contribution to world literature. Miriam Nichols has once again done exceptional scholarship.

  Peter Gizzi

  Important, Astonishment, Fields

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• American poetry is a mess. Long live American poetry.

  David Biespiel

  Long, Mess, Poetry Is

  "David Biespiel's poetry wire: the cynicism of Mark Edmundson, or poetry is still not dead". therumpus.net. June 21, 2013.

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• I think there's no excuse for the American poetry reader not knowing a good deal about what is going on in the rest of the world.

  James Laughlin

  Thinking, Knowing, World

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• I don't think American poetry has gotten any better in the past 35 years. Oddly enough, creative writing programs seem to have been good for fiction, and I would not have predicted that.

  Robert Morgan

  Writing, Past, Thinking

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• American poetry has been part of a culture in conflict....We are a people tending toward democracy at the level of hope; at another level, the economy of the nation, the empire of business within the republic, both include in their basic premise the idea of perpetual warfare

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Ideas, People, Democracy

  Muriel Rukeyser (2004). “Selected Poems”

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• For the past thirty years or so, much American poetry has been marked by an earnestness that rejects the comic. This has nothing to do with seriousness. The comic can be very serious. The trouble with the earnest is that it seeks to be commended. It seeks to be praised for its intention more than for what it is saying.

  Stephen Dobyns

  Past, Years, Serious

  Stephen Dobyns (2011). “Next Word, Better Word: The Craft of Writing Poetry”, p.59, Macmillan

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• I exaggerate. I oversimplify. I generalize. But there’s no cynicism here. American poetry is a mess. Long live American poetry.

  David Biespiel

  Long, Cynicism, Mess

  "David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: The Cynicism Of Mark Edmundson, Or Poetry Is Still Not Dead" by David Biespiel, therumpus.net. June 21, 2013.

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