"The ancient Greek oral poets all had this anxiety about the deficiencies of their memories and always began poems by praying to the Muse to help them remember."

Poet, Anxiety, Help, Memories, Poems

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"The ancient Greek oral poets all had this anxiety about the deficiencies of their memories and always began poems by praying to the Muse to help them remember."

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"Travelers are like poets. They are mostly an angry race."

Richard Burton, Welsh Actor

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"Well, we all start thinking we're going to be Romantic rock stars, but then reality hits and you realize no one reads you but other poets."

George Murray, Canadian Poet

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"I can't look at things in the simple, large way that great poets do."

Isaac Rosenberg, English Poet

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"Poets don't draw. They unravel their handwriting and then tie it up again, but differently."

Jean Cocteau, French Director

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"The ancient Greek oral poets all had this anxiety about the deficiencies of their memories and always began poems by praying to the Muse to help them remember."

David Antin, American Poet

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"I make it clear why I write as I do and why other poets write as they do. After hundreds of experiments I decided to go my own way in style and see what would happen."

Carl Sandburg, American Poet

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"I'm passing on a tradition of which I am part. There's a long line of poets who went before me, and I'm another one, and I'm hoping to pass that on to other younger, or newer, poets than myself."

Diane Wakoski, American Poet

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"There are very few great poets in the world."

Tahar Ben Jelloun, French Poet

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"I am no Poet here; my pen's the spout where the rain water of my eyes run out."

John Cleveland, English Poet

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"Frost is the most sophisticated of poets."

Peter Davison, British Actor

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Explore more quotes by David Antin

"I'm standing up thinking. Anybody who wants to listen is welcome. If not, I'm happy to see them go."

Thinking

"There are editing procedures for talks just as there are editing procedures in jazz improvisation."

Editing

"While I've had a great distaste for what's usually called song in modern poetry or for what's usually called music, I really don't think of speech as so far from song."

Poetry

"I can manage a prose format as long as I keep closer to Laurence Sterne than to Henry James."

Prose

"The Sophists' paradoxical talk pieces and their public debates were entertainment in 5th century Greece. And in that world, Socrates was an entertainer."

Sophists

"I reserve the right to tell shaggy dog stories or even common jokes as part of what I'm doing. I don't give a damn if half the audience walks out."

Shaggy

"I've always had a strong feeling for the Statue of Liberty, because it became the statue of my personal liberty."

Emotional

"There is probably no oral society that fails to mark the spatial distinction of left and right, peculiar as this distinction may be."

Society

"I'm not sure what theory is, unless it's the pursuit of fundamental questions."

Theory

"I hardly remember how I started to write poetry. It's hard to imagine what I thought poetry could do."

Poetry