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"I hardly remember how I started to write poetry. It's hard to imagine what I thought poetry could do."
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"You need a poetic touch from the outer space? Then you need the moonlight!"
"I love writing poetry because it's pretty. I love writing pretty."
"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."
"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."
"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 ..."
"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."
"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."
"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."
Explore more quotes by David Antin
"There are editing procedures for talks just as there are editing procedures in jazz improvisation."
"I have spoken to expert audiences occasionally, but then no audience is expert over the whole range of things I want to explore."
"I was very committed to the process of composing, working at poems, putting things together and taking them apart like some kind of experimental filmmaker."
"I was trying to find out what it was that everybody else understood without giving up my stubborn and hard-won lack of understanding."
"I'm standing up thinking. Anybody who wants to listen is welcome. If not, I'm happy to see them go."
"A myth is the name of a terrible lie told by a smelly little brown person to a man in a white suit with a pair of binoculars."
"I had no idea where these kids at a small private college in the San Fernando Valley were coming from, why they were coming to hear me, or what they needed to know."
"When my mother left her second husband, she wrote her autobiography and presented it to him for his approval."
"For several centuries what has passed for song in literary circles was any text that looked like the lyrics for a commonplace melodic setting."
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