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"My obsession with time informs my poetry so completely it is hard for me to summarize it. We want time to pass, for new things to happen to us, we want to hold on to certain moments, we don't want our lives to end."
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"For awhile after you quit Keats all other poetry seems to be only whistling or humming."
"I don't think Auden liked my poetry very much, he's very Anglican."
"How these words, wait to diein the arms of all the poetry..yet to be written."
"The lamp hummed:'Regard the moon,La lune ne garde aucune rancune,She winks a feeble eye,She smiles into corners.She smoothes the hair of the grass.The moon has lost her memory.A washed-out smallpox cracks her face,Her hand twists a paper rose,That smells of dust and old Cologne,She is aloneWith all the old nocturnal smellsThat cross and cross across her brain."The reminiscence comesOf sunless dry geraniumsAnd dust in crevices,Smells of chestnuts in the streets,And female smells in shuttered rooms,And cigarettes in corridorsAnd cocktail smells in bars."
"Each drop that fell, had a story to tell.each smile that curved, said a million words.(Poem: Our Existence, Book: Ginger and Honey)"
"A chronic poet should always be an inveterate nature-lover."
"Poetry should... should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance."
Explore more quotes by John Barton
"Some readers allow their prejudices to blind them. A good reader knows how to disregard inappropriate responses."
"The experiment of the poem is mostly intuitive. I write the first draft, pulling in the various elements that interest me, in the hope that their being combined will lead to some kind of insight."
"The community of poets I belong to is not as close as it used to be, if only for the fact that our lives have become busier: jobs, children, and the like."
"Most victims of my autobiographical verse are either far too polite, remarkably understanding unaware that I have written poems about them."
"The point of an experiment is not to arrive at a predetermined end point, to prove or disprove anything, but to deliver a poem that reveals much about the process taken."
"Poetry is but another form of inquiry into the nature of phenomena, using with its own unique procedures and tools."
"I have become intrigued with the combining of seemingly unrelated ideas or images, or the drawing upon the many, sometimes dissimilar, meanings a word might have."
"I would not say I chose to write long poems on a conscious level. The long poem has been a relative constant."
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