- everyone knows that poets are born and not made in school. [...] something that is essential can't be taught; it can only be given, or earned, or formulated in a manner too mysterious to be picked apart and redesigned for the next person.
- the part of the psyche that works in concert with consciousness and supplies a necessary part of the poem — the heat of a star as opposed to the shape of a star, let us say — exists in a mysterious, unmapped zone: not unconscious, not subconscious, but cautious. it learns quickly what sort of courtship it is going to be. say you promise to be at your desk in the evenings, from seven to nine. it waits, it watches. if you are reliably there, it begins to show itself — soon it begins to arrive when you do. but if you are only there sometimes and are frequently late or inattentive, it will appear fleetingly, or it will not appear at all. why should it? it can wait. it can stay silent a life time. who knows anyway what it is, that wild, silky part of ourselves without which no poem can live? ★
- that work is done slowly and in solitude, and it is as improbable as carrying water in a sieve. ★
- but the desire to make a poem, and the world's willingness to receive it — indeed the world's need of it — these never pass.
- time — a few centuries here or there — means very little in the world of poems. [...] the subjects that stir the heart are not so many, after all, and they do not change. styles change, and the historical backgrounds change, but these are only peripheral matters. in looking for poems and poets, don't dwell on the boundaries of style, or time, or even of countries and cultures. think of yourself rather as one member of a single, recognizable tribe. expect to understand poems of other eras and other cultures. expect to feel intimate with the distant voice. the differences you will find between then and now are interesting. they are not profound.
- you would learn very little in this world if you were not allowed to imitate. and to repeat your imitations until some solid grounding in the skill was achieved and the slight but wonderful difference — that made you you and no one else — could assert itself.
- every poem contains within itself an essential difference from ordinary language, no matter how similar to conversational language it may seem at first to be. call it formality, compression, originality, imagination — whatever it is, it is essential. [...] the space between daily language and literature is neither terribly deep nor wide, but it does contain a vital difference — of intent and intensity. in order to keep one's eyes on this central and abiding difference, the student must not get lost, either in structure or statement, but must be able to manage both. and language, as one naturally knows language, is the medium that will be quick and living — the serviceable clay of one's thoughts. and not what is, essentially, a new language. ★
- words have not only a definition and possibly a connotation, but also the "felt" quality of their own kind of sound.
- language is rich, and malleable. it is a living, vibrant material, and every part of a poem works in conjunction with every other part — the content, the pace, the diction, the rhythm, the tone — as well as the very sliding, floating, thumping, rapping sounds of it.
- within the poem, irregularities may occur for the sake of variation; they may also occur because of stresses required by the words themselves, for accuracy, for emphasis, etc. in addition, there may well be some variation between the way i read a line of a poem, and the way you read it. neither of us has to be wrong; we may both be within the bounds of the reasonable. perhaps it is partly this individual inflection with which each of us reads a poem that creates a personal bonding to it. it is a situation far more complicated, and interesting, than one in which only right or wrong is possible.
- invention hovers always a little above the rules. ★
- poems are "imaginary gardens with real toads in them," said marianne moore.
- the poet must not only write the poem but must scrutinize the world intensely, or anyway that part of the world he or she has taken for subject. if the poem is thin, it is likely so not because the poet does not know enough words, but because he or she has not stood long enough among the flowers — has not seen them in any fresh, exciting, and valid way. ★
- donald hall says "the new metaphor is a miracle, like the creation of life."
- poems begin in experience, but poems are not in fact experience, nor even a necessarily exact reportage of an experience. they are imaginative constructs, and they do not exist to tell us about the poet or the poet's actual experience — they exist in order to be poems. john cheever says somewhere in his journals, "i lie, in order to tell a more significant truth." the poem, too, is after "a more significant truth." loyalty to the actual experience — whatever got the poem started — is not necessarily helpful; often it is a hindrance.
- have some lines come to you, a few times, nearly perfect, as easily as a dream arranges itself during sleep? that's luck. that's grace, but this is the usual way: hard work, hard work, hard work. this is the way it is done. ★
- early in my life i determined not to teach because i like teaching very much. i thought if i was going to be a real poet — that is, write the best poetry i possibly could — i would have to guard my time and energy for its production, and thus i should not, as a daily occupation, do anything else that was interesting. of necessity i worked for many years at many occupations. none of them, in keeping with my promise, was interesting.
- the poem is a confession of faith.
- athletes take care of their bodies. writers must similarily take care of the sensibility that houses the possibility of poems. there is nourishment in books, other art, history, philosophies — in holiness and in mirth. it is in honest hands-on labor also; i don't mean to indicate a preference for the scholarly life. and it is in the green world — among people, and animals, and trees for that matter, if one genuinely cares about trees. a mind that is lively and inquiring, compassionate, curious, angry, full of music, full of feeling, is a mind full of possible poetry. poetry is a life-cherishing force. and it requires a vision — a faith, to use an old-fashioned term. yes, indeed. for poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry. yes, indeed. ★
mar 12 2025 ∞
aug 18 2025 +
aug 18 2025 +