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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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"Deep feeling doesn't make for good poetry. A way with language would be a bit of help."

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A.E. Samaan

"You need a poetic touch from the outer space? Then you need the moonlight!"

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A.E. Samaan

"I love writing poetry because it's pretty. I love writing pretty."

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A.E. Samaan

"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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A.E. Samaan

"I can write no stately proemAs a prelude to my lay;From a poet to a poemI would dare to say.For if of these fallen petalsOne to you seem fair,Love will waft it till it settlesOn your hair.And when wind and winter hardenAll the loveless land,It will whisper of the garden,You will understand."

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A.E. Samaan

"Deep down there is a rose in every heart."

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A.E. Samaan

"At seventeen I tried to write poetry confining myself solely to Anglo-Saxon words - don't know if it helped, but it made me more concrete ..."

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A.E. Samaan

"You know the way of the wind in the night-the desolate alleys my soul takes."

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A.E. Samaan

"The mint from your breath, the milk from your breast, the best of your mind, now in its worst state of condition. From the womb to the tomb, as a mild flower, you break your petals upon blossom, and seize death openly. Leaving your fragrance to spin and dance, one last time before being blown away."

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A.E. Samaan

"Now begins to rise in me the familiar rhythm; words that have lain dormant now lift, now toss their crests, and fall and rise, and falls again. I am a poet, yes. Surely I am a great poet."

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A.E. Samaan

"The secret of poetry is never explained - is always new. We have not got farther than mere wonder at the delicacy of the touch, & the eternity it inherits. In every house a child that in mere play utters oracles, & knows not that they are such. 'Tis as easy as breath. 'Tis like this gravity, which holds the Universe together, & none knows what it is."

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

Poetry

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Thom Gunn
"While I don't satisfy my curiosity about the way I work, I'm terribly curious about the way other poets work. But I would think that's true about many of us."

Work

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Thom Gunn
"We learned in the university to consider Wordsworth and Keats as Romantics. They were only a generation apart, but Wordsworth didn't even read Keats's book when he gave him a copy."

Writing

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Thom Gunn
"I haven't written anything in four years. I'm sort of dried up."

Writing

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Thom Gunn
"Many of my poems are not sexual."

Poems

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Thom Gunn
"I admired what my students were writing, but I think their improvement doesn't directly result from me but from being in a class, being with each other."

Being

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Thom Gunn
"It was difficult being a teacher and out of the closet in the '50s. By the time I retired, the English department was proud of having a gay poet of a certain minor fame. It was a very satisfactory change!"

Time

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Thom Gunn
"I deliberately decided to write a kind of guide to leather bars for straight people, for people not into leather, so that people could see what it was all about."

People

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Thom Gunn
"I deliberately wrote a poem in my last book where I was suggesting that there are other passions as great as or more important than the passion of sex."

Sex

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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."

Reading

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