“We know the particular poem, not what it says that we can restate.”
“Rome was a poem pressed into service as a city.”
“I want the poem to be an experience – for both the listener and for myself.”
“I did that Grammys thing – I did a little freeform poem.”
“A dark poem is meant to redeem the dark part.”
“I am always pleased to be asked to write a poem.”
“If you cannot be a poet, be the poem.”
“Reading a poem aloud to an audience is gestural as much as precise.”
“A poet’s cultural baggage and erudition can interfere with a poem.”
“A really good poem is full of music.”
“A picture is a poem without words.”
“Every old poem is sacred.”
“I don’t see that a single line can constitute a stanza, although it can constitute a whole poem.”
“However, if a poem can be reduced to a prose sentence, there can’t be much to it.”
“I do not usually revise much, though I often cut, particularly the end or toward the end of a poem.”
“The novel is born of disillusionment; the poem, of despair.”
“A poem is bound by language, but a poetics is not.”
“Strictly speaking, the idea of a scientific poem is probably as nonsensical as that of a poetic science.”
“A poem can provide testimony. A poem can provide solace. It can provide a connection.”
“Usually a life turned into a poem is misrepresented.”
“Every poem probably has sixty drafts behind it.”
“I know the sag of the unfinished poem. And I know the release of the poem that is finished.”
“I wrote a poem on my leg once, on the skin.”
“Peace goes into the making of a poem as flour goes into the making of bread.”
“But most commonly, it’s one poem that I work on with a lot of intensity.”
“For many years, I thought a poem was a whisper overheard, not an aria heard.”
“A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.”
“A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.”
“My favorite poem ever was ‘Annabel Lee’ by Edgar Allan Poe.”
“What inspires a poem for me is usually a moment.”
“I published my first poem in ‘The Paris Review’ in 1980.”
“Ginsberg’s Collected Poems contains a wonderful poem about making it with Neal Cassady.”
“And your very flesh shall be a great poem.”
“I’m uncomfortable with the focus on the poet and not on the poem.”
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