Writing Poetry Quotes - Page 5

• What has praise and fame to do with poetry? Was not writing poetry a secret transaction, a voice answering a voice? So that all this chatter and praise, and blame and meeting people who admired one and meeting people who did not admire one was as ill suited as could be to the thing itself- a voice answering a voice.

  Virginia Woolf

  Writing, Voice, People

  Virginia Woolf (2012). “Orlando: A Biography”, p.306, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Amory took to writing poetry on spring afternoons, in the gardens of the big estates near Princeton, while swans made effective atmosphere in the artificial pools, and slow clouds sailed harmoniously above the willow. May came too soon, and suddenly unable to bear walls, he wandered the campus at all hours through starlight and rain.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Wall, Spring, Rain

  F. Scott Fitzgerald (2015). “The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald: Novels, Short Stories, Poetry, Articles, Letters, Plays & Screenplays: From the author of The Great Gatsby, The Side of Paradise, Tender Is the Night, The Beautiful and Damned, The Love of the Last Tycoon, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and many other notable works”, p.148, e-artnow

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• It would be inappropiate, undignified, at 38, to conduct friendships or love affairs with the ardour or intensity of a 22 year old. Falling in love like that? Writing poetry? Crying at pop songs? Dragging people into photobooths? Taking a whole day to make a compilation tape? Asking people if they wanted to share your bed, just for company? If you quoted Bob Dylan or TS Eliot or, god forbid, Brecht at someone these days they would smile politely and step quietly backwards, and who would blame them? Ridiculous, at 38, to expect a song or book or film to change your life.

  David Nicholls

  Song, Falling In Love, Book

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• Gregory Corso used to get really pissed when people called Bob Dylan a 'poet.' After writing poetry for a few years, I can understand that.

  Steve Earle

  Writing, Years, People

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• I think that it's more likely that in my 60s and 70s I will be writing poetry rather than fiction.

  Robert Morgan

  Writing, Thinking, Fiction

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• Frankly, writing poetry for children is plain old fun, and I consider myself blessed to have such a delightful career.

  Jack Prelutsky

  Children, Fun, Blessed

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• Writing poetry is what I am. I wouldn’t know what else to be.

  Alice Notley

  Writing, Poetry Is, Knows

  "A Quick Interview With Alice Notley". Interview with Corey Zeller, ampersandreview.com. May 11, 2014.

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• A great many people seem to think writing poetry is worthwhile, even though it pays next to nothing and is not as widely read as it should be.

  Mark Strand

  Writing, Thinking, People

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• Writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.

  Theodor Adorno

  Writing, Poetry, Auschwitz

  Theodor W. Adorno, Rolf Tiedemann (2003). “Can One Live After Auschwitz?: A Philosophical Reader”, p.15, Stanford University Press

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• Poems have a different music from ordinary language, and every poem has a different kind of music of necessity, and that's, in a way, the hardest thing about writing poetry is waiting for that music, and sometimes you never know if it's going to come.

  C. K. Williams

  Writing, Waiting, Ordinary

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• I no longer feel I'll be dead by thirty; now it's sixty. I suppose these deadlines we set for ourselves are really a way of saying we appreciate time, and want to use all of it. I'm still
  writing, I'm still writing poetry, I still can't explain why, and I'm still running out of time.

  Margaret Atwood

  Running, Writing, Appreciate

  "Margaret Atwood : Writing Philosophy". Waterstone's Poetry Lecture, Delivered At Hay On Wye, canpoetry.library.utoronto.ca. June 1995.

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• In a way I spend my entire life stealing from everything - from the past, from cities I love, from where I grew up - grabbing things, taking not only from architecture but from Italy, art, writing, poetry, music.

  Renzo Piano

  Art, Writing, Past

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• When I'm writing poetry, 99.9% of my writing begins in English. I spent most of my life in English, although I am bilingual.

  Pat Mora

  Writing

  Source: www.teachingbooks.net

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• I began to write poetry when I was about four years old. In other words, I've always been writing poetry.

  Ernesto Cardenal

  Writing, Years, Four

  Source: www.commonwealmagazine.org

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• Before you ridicule, remember somebody on a railway platform who seems to be train spotting may actually be writing poetry.

  John Hegley

  Writing, May, Remember

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• I'm finding that writing poetry is strengthening my songwriting, because you're learning to make a piece of writing work on a page with nothing else. I was also finding within poetry I felt a lot more free to write about very different matters, to write about social issues or things that are going on around me.

  PJ Harvey

  Writing, Issues, Matter

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• I don't think there's any essential difference, at least for me, between writing poetry and writing prose.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Writing, Thinking, Differences

  Source: www.commonwealmagazine.org

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• The question does arise if how and why to write poetry in this time. It feels both completely essential and also quite difficult. But that's how writing poetry has felt to me my whole life. Everything seems to have just gotten immensely more mortal and tragic and scary, which makes it hard to concentrate, but also, if harnessed, can provide immense energy for making poems.

  Matthew Zapruder

  Writing, Scary, Energy

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Writing poetry helps me to write my fiction; each thing helps the other.

  Sandra Cisneros

  Writing, Fiction, Helping

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• Once considered an art form that called for talent, or at least a craft that called for practice, a poem now needs only sincerity. Everyone, we're assured, is a poet. Writing poetry is good for us. It expresses our inmost feelings, which is wholesome. Reading other people's poems is pointless since those aren't our own inmost feelings.

  Barbara Holland

  Art, Reading, Writing

  Barbara Holland (1999). “Wasn't the Grass Greener?: A Curmudgeon's Fond Memories”, Harcourt

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• I started out in life as a poet, I was only writing poetry all through my 20s, it wasn't until I was about 30 that I got serious about writing prose. While I was writing poems, I would often divert myself by reading detective novels, I liked them.

  Paul Auster

  Reading, Writing, Detectives

  "Big Think Interview With Paul Auster". Interviewed with Austin Allen, bigthink.com. November 5, 2009.

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• I started writing poetry when I was six. I had this teacher who didn't believe the poems I'd bring in were mine because they were dark and sad. But I wrote about what I experienced in my childhood.

  Mariah Carey

  Teacher, Believe, Writing

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• I don't think I ever had a morning where I woke up and said I'm going to be a professional poet. I know I've always loved poetry, I've always loved writing poetry and I've always loved sharing poetry. I've also always known that I wanted that to somehow be a very large part of my life and I'm very fortunate that it's such a large part of my life.

  Sarah Kay

  Morning, Writing, Thinking

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• I know some people might think it odd - unworthy even - for me to have written a cookbook, but I make no apologies. The U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins thought I had demeaned myself by writing poetry for Hallmark Cards, but I am the people's poet so I write for the people.

  Maya Angelou

  Writing, Apology, Thinking

  "Maya Angelou: 'I make no apologies for writing a cookbook'" by John Crace, www.theguardian.com. November 2, 2011.

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• I started writing poetry because language was how I understood the world. It was a paradigm that made everything matter and in forms that were safe to hold what I felt.

  Grace Cavalieri

  Writing, World, Safe

  "Four Energetic Women Behind America's Literary Arts". Interview with Daniela Gioseffi, www.raintaxi.com. 2012.

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