Robert Frost didn’t like to explain his poems—and for good reason: to explain a poem is to suck the air from its lungs. This does not mean, however, that poets shouldn’t talk about their poetry, or that one shouldn’t ask questions about it. R...
Lovers and madmen have such seething brains, Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend More than cool reason ever comprehends. The lunatic, the lover and the poet Are of imagination all compact: One sees more devils than vast hell can hold, That is, the...
What is needed is the imagination of the poet and the reasoning power of the mathematician. The thief of "The Purloined Letter" successfully hides the letter from the police because he is both a poet and a mathematician. Dupin is able to find it beca...
Birds are everywhere in our literature, a part, it seems, of our collective poetic imagination. If writing a beautiful line of poetry fills a poet's heart with joy, imagine how that same poet's soul must take flight at the sight of swallows soaring t...
Oh you dear companions Electric bells of the stations song of the reapers Butcher's sleigh regiment of unnumbered streets Cavalry of bridges nights livid with alcohol The cities I've seen lived like mad women (The Voyager)
Legend has it that while drinking wine in a boat on the river, [8th century Chinese poet Li Po] tried to grab the moon's reflection on the surface and tumbled in, which is probably the poet's equivalent of dying bravely in battle.
I define influence simply as literary love, tempered by defense. The defenses vary from poet to poet. But the overwhelming presence of love is vital to understanding how great literature works.
No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone; you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the ...
Maybe you're one of those people who writes poems, but rarely reads them. Let me put this as delicately as I can: If you don't read, your writing is going to suck.
You are not your poetry. Your self-esteem shouldn't depend on whether you publish, or whether some editor or writer you admire thinks you're any good.
Who you are contributes to your poetry in a number of important ways, but you shouldn't identify with your poems so closely that when they are cut, you're the one that bleeds.
He [the poet] brings out the inner part of things and presents them to men in such a way that they cannot refuse but must accept it. But how the mere choice and rhythm of words should produce so magical an effect no one has yet been able to comprehen...
McAllister: "Show me the heart unfettered by foolish dreams and I'll show you a happy man." John Keating: "But only in their dreams can men be truly free. 'Twas always thus, and always thus will be." McAllister: Tennyson? John Keating: No, Keating.
John Keating: Boys, you must strive to find your own voice. Because the longer you wait to begin, the less likely you are to find it at all. Thoreau said, "Most men lead lives of quiet desperation." Don't be resigned to that. Break out!
John Keating: Mr. Pitts, would you open your hymnal to page 542 and read the first stanza of the poem you find there. Pitts: [reading the poem title] "To the Virgins To Make Much of Time"? John Keating: Yes, that's the one. Somewhat appropriate, isn'...
Richard Cameron: Hey Neal, business as usual huh? I heard you got the new kid. He looks like a stiff! [laughs a little and when Todd the new kid appears he gets embarrassed] Richard Cameron: Oops!
[about joining the DPS] Dalton: It'll help you get Chris! Knox: Yeah? How? Dalton: Women swoon! [Dalton rushes off to class] Knox: But why do they swoon? [runs after Dalton] Knox: Charlie, tell me why they swoon!
Well, it's a badge of honour for any self-respecting poet to be criticized by Auberon Waugh. But in a lot of ways my poems are very conventional, and it's no big deal for me to write a poem in either free verse or strict form; modern poets can, and d...
and my friend Karen remembers as a little girl studying Hebrew she inquired of her refugee tutor who stroked his beard and said in Yiddish "if there is a god or if there isn't a god a Jew studies"--isn't that a good story beloved, but the woman in me...
I'm not a journalist; I'm a poet.
Like water our ideals for writing what seems at first to be a calling to pen a masterpiece, it at first can be pure, fluid even (words can come easily) but we also have to learn to work with what our eyes glaze over as weak substitutes, words that we...
