There are interesting forms of difficulty, and there are unprofitable forms of difficulty. I mean, I enjoy some difficult poetry, but some of it is impenetrable and I actually wouldn't want to penetrate it if I could, perhaps.
I didn't write anything at all except book reports until I was in seventh grade, and then I wrote mostly poetry for myself.
Poetry, fiction as novels or short stories - these are autonomous as created by their authors. They should stand on their own, like pieces of furniture that should be judged as to their usefulness, elegance.
Poetry for me is very easy. It's like a lightning bolt. I feel this calling, and the first line of the poem comes into my head, and I just have to go to the page, to the typewriter, to the computer or whatever and write it.
I developed a definition - which I think becomes less and less accurate as poetry moves into the world - that poetry was a way of speaking to the world, but fiction was a way to get the world to speak to me.
Shakespeare has been praised in English more than anything mortal except poetry itself. Fame exhausts thought in his eulogy.
When the modern movement began, starting perhaps with the paintings of Manet and the poetry of Baudelaire and Rimbaud, what distinguished the modern movement was the enormous honesty that writers, painters and playwrights displayed about themselves. ...
Listen, real poetry doesn't say anything; it just ticks off the possibilities. Opens all doors. You can walk through any one that suits you.
I've been reading poetry publicly for 20 years, and this is what you do - you express, you sometimes dig a bit to get a conversation started. That's the point of poetry. You're supposed to go, 'Hmmmm,' and 'Woooh!'
A group of us started a community center in Santa Monica. We've tried different programs, and three have worked really well. A poetry group. Once a week we visit Venice High and talk to girls at risk.
There is one type of ideal woman very seldom described in poetry - the old maid, the woman whom sorrow or misfortune prevents from fulfilling her natural destiny.
I think poetry is the only domain where a writer you like can truly be said to influence you, because you read and reread a poem so many times that it simply drills itself into your head.
My friends never talk to me about my poetry because they're embarrassed that I write it or they're embarrassed by what I write about which are not such extraordinarily terrifying things, but they are the state of human existence.
What I wanted to do in rock 'n roll was merge poetry with sonic scapes, and the two people who had contributed so much to that were Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison.
When you're writing fiction or poetry... it really comes down to this: indifference to everything except what you're doing... A young writer could do worse than follow the advice given in those lines.
You have to learn a few things, which you do along the way, but basically, poetry is a matter of the ear. Iambic pentameters or what constitutes a stanza comes naturally - your ears will know.
Why do writers, say, give up a job in economics and decide to write poetry? Or, why do they give up a job in a bank and decide to paint, like Krishan Khanna? They want to convey something.
Most people read poetry listening for echoes because the echoes are familiar to them. They wade through it the way a boy wades through water, feeling with his toes for the bottom: The echoes are the bottom.
The big stars I felt a kinship with were never the romantic leads. It wasn't Steve McQueen or Robert Redford - it was people like Walter Matthau and Anthony Quinn. My big hero was Tommy Cooper.
I have nothing against romance. I believe that we must hold on to the right to dream and to be romantic. But an Indian village is not something that I would romanticize that easily.
Personally, I can't see why it would be any less romantic to find a husband in a nice four-color catalogue than in the average downtown bar at happy hour.
