"I think we will always have the impulse towards visual poetry with us, and I wouldn't agree with Bly that it's a bad thing. It depends on the ability of the individual poet to do it well, and to make a shape which is interesting enough to hold your attention."

Poetry, Ability, Attention, Will

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"I think we will always have the impulse towards visual poetry with us, and I wouldn't agree with Bly that it's a bad thing. It depends on the ability of the individual poet to do it well, and to make a shape which is interesting enough to hold your attention."

Exlpore more Poetry quotes

"For awhile after you quit Keats all other poetry seems to be only whistling or humming."

F. Scott Fitzgerald, American Author

Poetry,

"When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses."

John F. Kennedy, American President

Poetry, Power, Arrogance, Concern

"Old wives keep in memory word of things that once were needful for the wise to know."

J. R. R. Tolkien, English Novelist

Poetry, Beauty, Peace, Happiness, Love

"Everything one invents is true, you may be perfectly sure of that. Poetry is as precise as geometry."

Gustave Flaubert, French Novelist

Poetry, Geometry, May

"Women do not have as great a need for poetry because their own essence is poetry."

Karl Schlegel, German Philosopher

Poetry, Women

"From what the moderns want, we must learn what poetry should become; from what the ancients did, what poetry must be."

Karl Schlegel, German Philosopher

Poetry, Want

"In the grueling light that passed for day..."

Cormac McCarthy, American Writer

Poetry, Light, Life, Description

"Poetry is an art, and chief of the fine art; the easiest to dabble in, the hardest in which to reach true excellence."

Edmund C. Stedman, American Poet

Poetry, Art, Excellence

"I despair of ever writing excellent poetry."

Isaac Rosenberg, English Poet

Poetry, Despair, Writing

"The rudiment of verse may, possibly, be found in the spondee."

Edgar Allan Poe, American Poet

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Explore more quotes by James Laughlin

"Concrete poets continue to turn out beautiful things, but to me they're more visual than oral, and they almost really belong on the wall rather than in a book. I haven't the least idea of where poetry is going."

Poetry

"Often something comes in from which you can see that the person is good, the book may not be perfect as it is, and the person doesn't want to do a re-write. That's something we do almost nothing of."

Literature

"I think that is where poetry reading becomes such an individual thing. I mean I have friend who like poets who just don't say anything to me at all, I mean they seem to me rather ordinary and pedestrian."

Friendship

"The German experience, as you can see, did move me very much. Seeing that terrible destruction and seeing the miserable state of the people, how they had been beaten down by the war through no fault of their own probably."

War

"I do read everything that we publish. We usually have to have two or three votes for a book before we take it on. So in that sense I suppose it is an orchestra."

Sense

"I think there is a great difference, in that when the poet is reading you get the whole personality of the person, especially if he's a good reader. Whereas a person just sitting gets what he puts into it."

Reading

"There are numerous cases of that, where one of our writers discovers another writer whom he likes, and we then take that book on. So it's a very close relationship. We can do that because we're so small."

Literature

"I try to write in plain brown blocks of American speech but occasionally set in an ancient word or a strange word just to startle the reader a little bit and to break up the monotony of the plain American cadence."

Writing

"I think one ages and one dates. I tend to have a good deal of difficulty in liking some of the new poets."

Literature

"Of course a poem is a two-way street. No poem is any good if it doesn't suggest to the reader things from his own mind and recollection that he will read into it, and will add to what the poet has suggested. But I do think poetry readings are very important."

Poetry