W. S. Di Piero Quotes

United States, Poet
1945

William Simone Di Piero (born 1945 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is an American poet, translator, essayist, and educator. He has published ten collections of poetry and five collections of essays in addition to his translations. In 2012 Di Piero received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize for his lifetime achievement; in making the award, Christian Wiman noted, "He’s a great poet whose work is just beginning to get the wide audience it deserves."

Also known as Translator, Essayist, Educator

You can't be a poet certainly of my generation and not have deep in your animal brain the comment of William Carlos Williams, no ideas except in things.

W. S. Di Piero
- Brain
- Deep
- Animal
I've spent most of my life in cities, and so I've always lived with the curiosity about what makes for city cultures and how peoples live in cities, how peoples anywhere manage to co-exist, the public life and the private life.

W. S. Di Piero
- Life
- Live
- City

One of the appeals of William Carlos Williams to me is that he was many different kinds of poet. He tried out many different forms in his own way of, more or less, formlessness. He was also a poet who could be - he was a love poet, he was a poet of the natural order and he was also a political poet.

W. S. Di Piero
- Different
- Political
Every cliche is true, right? That's why they're cliches.

W. S. Di Piero
- Why
- True
When I came into consciousness as a writer when I was in my early 20s, I just assumed that a writer did - a poet writer did everything all at once. I would write poetry, and while writing poetry I would also write work in the world - if I could get into the world.

W. S. Di Piero
- World
- Work
- Writing
This constant stream of qualia we feel in our stomachs.

W. S. Di Piero
When you're writing - when I'm writing anyway - I'm writing out of different kinds of preoccupations and obsessions, different forms of drivenness, and so you're really hostage those while writing. I am, anyway. And it's only when you finally take the finished thing out of the furnace that you see what it was that went into the making of the thing.

W. S. Di Piero
- Different
- Writing
Some days, who can stare at swathes of sky,

W. S. Di Piero
- Sky