To sing a song is quite different than to write a poem. I'm not and never will be a novelist, but to write a novel is not the same thing as writing a play. There is a difference in form, but essentially what you're after is the same thing.
A poem is never finished, only abandoned.
If I were to agree to write the music for your beautiful poem, it would tie your poem up for some years as I have agreements and obligations which I must respect.
Critics? How do they happen? I know how it happened to me. I would send a poem or story to a magazine and they would say this doesn't suit our needs precisely but on the other hand you sound interesting. Would you be interested in doing a review?
I wrote two poems about the '81 uprisings: 'Di Great Insohreckshan' and 'Mekin Histri.' I wrote those two poems from the perspective of those who had taken part in the Brixton riots. The tone of the poem is celebratory because I wanted to capture the mood of exhilaration felt by black people at the time.
A poem may be an instance of morality, of social conditions, of psychological history; it may instance all its qualities, but never one of them alone, nor any two or three; never less than all.
Beginning a poem, the poet as a rule doesn't know the way it's going to come out, and at times, he is very surprised by the way it turns out, since often it turns out better than he expected; often his thought carries further than he reckoned.
We hold that the most wonderful and splendid proof of genius is a great poem produced in a civilized age.
A poem is learned by heart and then not again repeated. We will suppose that after a half year it has been forgotten: no effort of recollection is able to call it back again into consciousness.
As an actor, I come to set, and I have already broken the character down by writing a poem about the character. I try to write in his voice, the way he would write it.
I keep the drafts of each poem in color-coded folders. I pick up the folders according to how I feel about that color that day.
A translation is no translation, he said, unless it will give you the music of a poem along with the words of it.
For me, the short story is the depth of a novel, the breadth of a poem, and, as you come to the last few paragraphs, the experience of surprise.
The poem is sad because it wants to be yours, and cannot be.
Usually a life turned into a poem is misrepresented.
Every time you read a poem aloud to yourself in the presence of others, you are reading it into yourself and them. Voice helps to carry words farther and deeper than the eye.
Even though I am the daughter of a poet, and my stepmother is also a poet, growing up, I didn't think I could understand poetry; I didn't think that it had any relevance to my life, the feelings that I endured on a day-to-day basis, until I was introduced to the right poem.
The only real evidence that any critic may bring before his gaze is the finished poem.
Poetry was one of the things that interested me most as I was growing up. I used to write it in my head all the time. I still think the very greatest pleasure in life is to write a poem.
And at least in poetry you should feel free to lie. That is, not to lie, but to imagine what you want, to follow the direction of the poem.
I sometimes talk about the making of a poem within the poem.
How does one happen to write a poem: where does it come from? That is the question asked by the psychologists or the geneticists of poetry.
Poetry is the experience of liberty. The poet risks himself, chances all on the poem's all with each verse he writes.
The term 'epitaph' itself means 'something to be spoken at a burial or engraved upon a tomb.' When an epitaph is a poem written for a tomb, and appears in a book, we are aware that we are not reading it in its proper form: we are reading a reproduction. The original of the epitaph is the tomb itself, with its words cut into the stone.
I consider a poem to be a kind of experiment where a number of elements are brought together under test conditions to see how they will interact to create meaning or relevance.
With several different kinds of poetry to choose from, a man would decide that he would like best to be an epic poet, and he would set out, in conscious determination, on an epic poem.
Whether you listen to a piece of music, or a poem, or look at a picture or a jug, or a piece of sculpture, what matters about it is not what it has in common with others of its kind, but what is singularly its own.
When I think of Emily Dickinson, there's not one particular poem of hers that jumps out, but I do have a very vivid image of an ill woman with giant eyes who wants to write about the sun exploding.
Sometimes the only way I know how to work through something is by writing a poem. And sometimes I get to the end of the poem and look back and go, 'Oh, that's what this is all about,' and sometimes I get to the end of the poem and haven't solved anything, but at least I have a new poem out of it.
When you put a poem on a Kindle, the lines are broken in order to fit on the screen. And so instead of being the poet's decision, it becomes the device's decision.
As any parent, teacher, or librarian knows, there is no richer experience than to see children's faces light up at the suspense of a new tale or the surprise of a new poem. The uninhibited joy with which they listen is surely akin to that of adult audiences of old around campfire and hearth.
When I was 18 years old I went to Shakespeare Company, the school, and I wrote a poem about my leaves - I felt like a tree that had no leaves. That is the life at 18.
The poem 'What Teachers Make' is not without its detractors. This one person wrote to me and said: 'Gee, Mr. Mali. You don't possibly have a teacher-God complex, do you?' And that was the first time I'd ever heard of that expression. So, yeah, I'm sure I have a teacher-God complex.
I know the sag of the unfinished poem. And I know the release of the poem that is finished.
A perfect poem you can't pin down and say, 'This is exactly what it meant to me.' It's not a self-help manual.
A dark poem is meant to redeem the dark part.