top of page


"I guess I wanted to leave America for awhile. It wasn't that I wanted to become an expatriate, or just never come back, I needed some breathing room. I'd already been translating French poetry, I'd been to Paris once before and liked it very much, and so I just went."
Standard
Customized
More


"A poet often lives in an enchanted land where he sees things not with his eyes but with his feelings."
Author Name
Personal Development


"The sort of poetry I seek resides in objects man can't touch."
Author Name
Personal Development


"Irish poets, learn your trade, sing whatever is well made, scorn the sort now growing up all out of shape from toe to top."
Author Name
Personal Development


"Poetry and consumption are the most flattering of diseases."
Author Name
Personal Development


"A group of us started a community center in Santa Monica. We've tried different programs, and three have worked really well. A poetry group. Once a week we visit Venice High and talk to girls at risk."
Author Name
Personal Development


"I grew up in this town, my poetry was born between the hill and the river, it took its voice from the rain, and like the timber, it steeped itself in the forests."
Author Name
Personal Development


"Poetry is fascinating. As soon as it begins the poetry has changed the thing into something extra, and somehow prose can go over into poetry."
Author Name
Personal Development


"If it is an imperfect word, no external circumstance can heighten its value as poetry."
Author Name
Personal Development


"Sometimes poets expect me to think far deeper than I'm willing to dig."
Author Name
Personal Development


"If a poem is not memorable, there's probably something wrong. One of the problems of free verse is that much of the free verse poetry is not memorable."
Author Name
Personal Development
More


"I was always interested in French poetry sort of as a sideline to my own work, I was translating contemporary French poets. That kind of spilled out into translation as a way to earn money, pay for food and put bread on the table."
Food


"It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not."
Writing


"We construct a narrative for ourselves, and that's the thread that we follow from one day to the next. People who disintegrate as personalities are the ones who lose that thread."
People


"If you're not ready for everything, you're not ready for anything."
Reading


"There's hope for everyone. That's what makes the world go round."
Hope


"You see, the interesting thing about books, as opposed, say, to films, is that it's always just one person encountering the book, it's not an audience, it's one to one."
Books


"All I wanted to do was write - at the time, poems, and prose, too. I guess my ambition was simply to make money however I could to keep myself going in some modest way, and I didn't need much, I was unmarried at the time, no children."
Money


"I don't think that you can be prescriptive about anything, I mean, life is too complicated. Maybe there are novels where the author has not in the least thought about it in terms of film, which can be turned into good films."
Life


"It's extremely difficult to get these jobs because you can't get a job on a ship unless you have seaman's paper's, and you can't get seaman's papers unless you have a job on a ship. There had to be a way to break through the circle, and he was the one who arranged it for me."
Job


"You have to protect it too, you can't let just any stupid person take it and do something demoralizing with it. At the same time, I don't believe in being so rigid about controlling what happens either."
Time
bottom of page