Peter Davison Quotes
It is a way we reassess our past. We can do that in poetry in ways we can't do in prose.
Quotes to Explore
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A British porch is a musty, forbidding non-room in which to fling a sodden umbrella or a muddy pair of boots; a guard against the elements and strangers. By contrast the good ol' American front porch seems to stand for positivity and openness; a platform from which to welcome or wave farewell; a place where things of significance could happen.
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Writing about the future and the past is less a way of dramatizing change than of showing, by way of contrast, what abides.
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Many past products advertised in old publications can be profitably promoted all over again. Sometimes, just by giving them a new twist or modern application, you'll hit a real winner.
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A fashion show is like a 10-minute play, but there's all this anticipation; Everyone arriving, finding their seats, then there's 10 minutes of people walking past and clothes and music, then the whole thing is finished.
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For awhile after you quit Keats all other poetry seems to be only whistling or humming.
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The only thing I regret about my past is the length of it. If I had to live my life again I'd make all the same mistakes - only sooner.
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I don't like to travel as much as I have in the past, but it's good for my soul to get to pick, especially with these good musicians and these guys that play so well.
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The bold adventurer succeeds the best.
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I am not ashamed of anything - not my past, not my affairs, not my body, and most definitely not my desire.
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The simple truth of our finiteness is that we could, by whatever means, go on interminably only at the price of either losing the past and, therewith, our identity, or living only in the past and therefore without a real present. We cannot seriously wish either and thus not a physical enduring at that price.
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I think that one possible definition of our modern culture is that it is one in which nine-tenths of our intellectuals can't read any poetry.
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I like connecting the abstract to the concrete. There's a tension in that. I believe the reader or listener should be able to enter the poem as a participant. So I try to get past resolving poems.
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Poetry and beauty are always making peace. When you read something beautiful you find coexistence; it breaks walls down.
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If I'm feeling desperate, I'll go out image-hunting. I'll go to news agents and stand at the rack flicking through magazines or go to second-hand bookshops. And then, bit by bit, like concrete poetry, I start to realise that I am drawn to particular things, and then I start wondering why that is.
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I don't want to be involved with an actor because I know how they are. I've had problems in the past being with guys who haven't had any success or haven't made as much money, and it's very uncomfortable.
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My first book was an adult novel, 'Down Among the Gods,' published by Virago, and I've written poems as well, a slim volume of poetry.
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I don't connect much with the present. I have more of an affinity for what came in the past.
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Writers are historians, too. It is in literature that the greater truths about a people and their past are found.
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The good thing is that I'm always honest.
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Poetry arises from the desire to get beyond the finite and the historical—the human world of violence and difference—and to reach the transcendent or divine. You're moved to write a poem, you feel called upon to sing, because of that transcendent impulse. But as soon as you move from that impulse to the actual poem, the song of the infinite is compromised by the finitude of its terms.
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I feel that my work is not in vain, that it does have a place in society, even though it may not be considered that it has a place in society - it doesn't matter.
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I admire the Islam. There's a lot of good principles in it.
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"Don't trust metaphors," the wombat snorted. "If you let things start claiming to mean other things, there's no limit on how many things they can mean!"
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It is a way we reassess our past. We can do that in poetry in ways we can't do in prose.
