...[A] would-be poet serves his apprenticeship in a library. This has its advantages. Though the Master is deaf and dumb and gives neither instruction nor criticism, the apprentice can choose any Master he likes, living or dead, the Master is available at any hour of the day or night, lessons are all for free, and his passionate admiration of his Master will ensure that he work hard to please him....
My first Master was Thomas Hardy, and I think I was very lucky in my choice. He was a good poet, perhaps a great one, but not too good. Much as I loved him, even I could see that his diction was often clumsy and forced, and that a lot of his poems were plain bad. This gave me hope where a flawless poet might have made me despair. His world and sensibility were close enough to mine...so that, in imitating him, I was being led towards not away from myself, but they were not so close as to obliterate my identity. If I looked through his spectacles, I was at least conscious of a certain eyestrain.—W. H. Auden, "Making, Knowing and Judging,"
in The Dyer's Hand and Other Essays
PARADE: What did you ... have that champions need?
Martina: I think the ability to fail. Not being afraid to put it all on the line and come up short. Most people don't have that.From A Winning Friendship in PARADE Magazine
As a broad working definition, art awakens feeling.... That is what songs do, even dumb pop songs: they remind us that emotions are not an inconvenient and vaguely embarrassing aspect of the human enterprise but its central purpose.
Ben: You're pretty.That's it—our relationship in a nutshell.
KT: I'm hungry, I have to pee, and I feel dizzy.
Ben: Well, it becomes you.
Robert Frost said that writing poetry without rhyme is like playing tennis without a net. And that having to rhyme helped him to think of words and even ideas.... Consider the writing of a poem as the playing of a game, getting the ball through a hoop, a technical problem to be solved. It may seem very unpoetic but it leads to better luck with poems.
What you need for writing poems then is some interesting games to play, that is, some interesting rules you must obey. Allen Tate once described a poet as someone "willing to come under the bondage of limitations—if he can find them."—Peter Elbow, Writing with Power
[S]cars from honorable wounds shall not be considered a fault.I'm familiar with this quote by way of Kevin Kling's wonderful book, The Dog Says How. Highly recommended.
I like to talk about the composition of poems as involving a series of allegiances that we keep as long as we can, but that we're likely to modify and refine as the poem starts to insist upon itself.—Stephen Dunn, "The Guardian Angel," in Introspections: American Poets on One of Their Own Poems, edited by Robert Pack and Jay Parini
After drafting the poem through to its tentative conclusion on the second morning after I'd begun it, I thought about it all day. As I carried out my errands, I conducted a craft discussion with myself about what the poem needed. I was aware that with the word "power" I'd simply named one of the poem's main thematic concerns—a move in composition that I almost always consider a mistake. Naming the theme—which usually occurs in the title or the conclusion of a work—often robs a poem of its natural ambiguity....—David Huddle, "About my 'Basket': Looking for Closure," in Introspections: American Poets on One of Their Own Poems, edited by Robert Pack and Jay Parini
Sometimes it seems to me as if metaphor were the advance guard of the mind; something in us reaches out, into the landscape in front of us, looking for the right vessel, the right vehicle, for whatever will serve.
Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind.—Henry James
It seems to me that poetry is a lot like photography. The secret to getting good photos, or poems, is to take a lot of shots.—Robert Peake, How Do You Be a Poet Every Day?, on Read Write Poem
End on an image and don't explain it.—Stanley Kunitz
Five different agents declined to represent CandyFreak. The publisher of Metal refused to even read a draft. My point is this: agents and editors sometimes don't know shit. When they reject your work, take it as your mission to prove them wrong.—Steve Almond, This Won't Take But a Minute, Honey
I came to understand that fiction writing is like duck hunting. You go to the right place at the right time with the right dog. You get into the water before dawn, wearing a little protective gear, then you stand behind some reeds and wait for the story to present itself. This is not to say you are passive. You choose the place and the day. You pick the gun and the dog. You have the desire to blow the duck apart for reasons that are entirely your own. But you have to be willing to accept not what you wanted to have happen, but what happens. You have to write the story you find in the circumstances you've created, because more often than not the ducks don't show up. The hunters in the next blind begin to argue, and you realize they're in love. You see a snake swimming in your direction. Your dog begins to shiver and whine, and you start to think about this gun that belonged to your father. By the time you get out of the marsh you will have written a novel so devoid of ducks it will shock you.—Ann Patchett, What now?
I used to think authors could make their books best-sellers through willpower alone. But we can't. What we need is a miracle.The monday morning quote returns after a brief hiatus for a family emergency and I'm going to start the new year with a quote I find to be both inspiring and true--and with a plug for Poets & Writers.
And that's fantastic. Because miracles happen. Like my Princeton fellowship. That one application, assembled the night before the deadline, bought a whole year of time to think and create. If I've learned anything in this business, it's that the more you fling yourself out there and chase those dreams and miracles, the higher your likelihood of catching one. [Lesson No. 7: Miracles happen, especially if you pursue them.]—Stephanie Elizondo Griest, "Confessions of an Author Nomad" in Poets & Writers
