Writing

"Give a poet a pen"

"I rhyme To see myself, to set the darkness echoing."

"My Muse sits forlorn She wishes she had not been born She sits in the cold No word she says is ever told."

"One writes because one has been touched by the yearning for and the despair of ever touching the Other."

"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."

"A poem is never a put-up job, so to speak. It begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. It is never a thought to begin with."

"I sit in my tree I sing like the birds My beak is my pen My songs are my poems."

"I do think that poetry is important though, if you don’t strive at it, if you don’t fill it full of stars and falseness."

"Look deeper through the telescopeand do not be afraid when the starscollide towards the darkness,because sometimes the most beautifulthings begin in chaos."

"Everything you invent is true: you can be sure of that. Poetry is a subject as precise as geometry."

"I have no doubt at all the Devil grins,As seas of ink I spatter. Ye gods, forgive my "literary" sins --The other kind don't matter."

"We aren't suggesting that mental instability or unhappiness makes one a better poet, or a poet at all; and contrary to the romantic notion of the artist suffering for his or her work, we think these writers achieved brilliance in spite of their suffering, not because of it."

"The true poem rests between the words."

"Wordplay hides a key to reality that the dictionary tries in vain to lock inside every free word."

"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."

"How to Write a Poem Catch the airaround the butterfly."

"Rem tene, verba sequentur: grasp the subject, and the words will follow. This, I believe, is the opposite of what happens with poetry, which is more a case of verba tene, res sequenter: grasp the words, and the subject will follow."

"He drove his mind into the abyss where poetry is written."

"so much of the world is plunged in darkness and chaos... So ring the bells that still can ring Forget your perfect offering There is a crack in everything That’s how the light gets in."

"Relate comic things in pompous fashion. Irregularity, in other words the unexpected, the surprising, the astonishing, are essential to and characteristic of beauty. Two fundamental literary qualities: supernaturalism and irony. The blend of the grotesque and the tragic are attractive to the mind, as is discord to blasé ears. Imagine a canvas for a lyrical, magical farce, for a pantomime, and translate it into a serious novel. Drown the whole thing in an abnormal, dreamy atmosphere, in the atmosphere of great days … the region of pure poetry."