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Thom Gunn

"My old teacher's definition of poetry is an attempt to understand."

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"My old teacher's definition of poetry is an attempt to understand."

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Amber Hurdle

"That men, who might have tower'd in the vanOf all the congregated world, to fanAnd winnow from the coming step of timeAll chaff of custom, wipe away all slimeLeft by men-slugs and human serpentry,Have been content to let occasion die,Whilst they did sleep in love's Elysium."

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Amber Hurdle

"My heart ist melting, I love you, Drops of Gold."

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Amber Hurdle

"My love is a winter's mistgently dissolvingthrough the windowat the nape of your neck."

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Amber Hurdle

"In the endit is wordspoetry. sunsetssomeone's deep blue silk voice.mountain scents.someone's smile.eyes. that we haveno defenses against."

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Amber Hurdle

"Good poetry does not exist merely for the sake of itself, but rather, is a byproduct of yearning and growth; great poetry canonizes that yearning for the growth of others."

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Amber Hurdle

"Poems can getsleepless tooand becomethe loneliest thingin the universe."

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Amber Hurdle

"A poet is not an inventor. A poet is a player that plays with words on the field of human imagination to excite a reader's mind with the colors of emotion."

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Amber Hurdle

"Whatever you get out of poetry - take it. take it. take it. Words are better off felt than understood."

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Amber Hurdle

"For all I can really do is stand here in September's rain savoring, soaking it all in slipping..and simply holding on to poetry for dear life."

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Amber Hurdle

"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."

Explore more quotes by Thom Gunn

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Thom Gunn
"When I was an undergraduate I had very badly annotated editions of Shakespeare's sonnets, all of which left out the important fact that will has a sexual sense in Shakespeare's sonnets."
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Thom Gunn
"When I first started teaching at Berkeley in 1958, I could not announce that I was gay to anybody, though probably quite a few of my fellow teachers knew."
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Thom Gunn
"As humans we look at things and think about what we've looked at. We treasure it in a kind of private art gallery."
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Thom Gunn
"I try not to observe myself in the process of composing a poem because I don't want to come up with a formula, which I would then be unscrupulous in using."
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Thom Gunn
"I was at a benefit for some imprisoned students in the '60s at San Francisco State, and there were lots of poets reading for the benefit: one was Elizabeth Bishop."
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Thom Gunn
"When I first started to write, I was aware of being queer, but I didn't write about it. Queer poems would probably not have been accepted by the editors I sent them to."
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Thom Gunn
"I was reading the poems of Rochester. Rochester made himself out to be bisexual, but I think that was only to shock. Most of his poetry is sexual, even pornographic."
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Thom Gunn
"We control the content of our dreams."
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Thom Gunn
"Deep feeling doesn't make for good poetry. A way with language would be a bit of help."
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Thom Gunn
"There have been two popular subjects for poetry in the last few decades: the Vietnam War and AIDS, about both of which almost all of us have felt deeply."
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