Ben Lerner Quotes
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.
Ben Lerner
Quotes to Explore
A person is born with feelings of envy and hate. If he gives way to them, they will lead him to violence and crime, and any sense of loyalty and good faith will be abandoned.
Xun Kuang
Before people complain of the obscurity of modern poetry, they should first examine their consciences and ask themselves with how many people and on how many occasions they have genuinely and profoundly shared some experience with another.
W. H. Auden
The motto of his Robinson Jeffers’s work is 'More! More!'-but as Tolstoy says, 'A wee bit omitted, overemphasized, or exaggerated in poetry, and there is no contagion'; and Frost, bearing him out, says magnificently: 'A very little of anything goes a long way in a work of art.'
Randall Jarrell
Trying to make a living from poetry is like putting chains on butterfly wings.
A. R. Ammons
The rules of sexism do not free men from the terror of violence; they only keep men from complaining about it.
Warren Farrell
His the author's renown has been purchased, not by deeds of violence and blood, but by the diligent dispensation of pleasure.
Washington Irving
Poetry can be criticized only through poetry. A critique which itself is not a work of art, either in content as representation of the necessary impression in the process of creation, or through its beautiful form and in its liberal tone in the spirit of the old Roman satire, has no right of citizenship in the realm of art.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
When it gets down to having to use violence, then you are playing the system’s game. The establishment will irritate you – pull your beard, flick your face – to make you fight. Because once they’ve got you violent, then they know how to handle you. The only thing they don’t know how to handle is non-violence and humor.
John Lennon
The Beatles
My poetry is the most disappointing thing for me that I've ever written. When I say I can write everything, I don't say I can write everything well.
Jess Walter
My friends never talk to me about my poetry because they're embarrassed that I write it or they're embarrassed by what I write about which are not such extraordinarily terrifying things, but they are the state of human existence.
Peter Davison
What my character is or how many jails I have lounged in, or wards or walls or wassails, how many lonely-heart poetry readings I have dodged, is beside the point. A man's soul or lack of it will be evident with what he can carve upon a white sheet of paper.
Charles Bukowski
I came into music because I thought the presentation of poetry wasn't vibrant enough. So I merged improvised poetry with basic rock chords. That was my original mission.
Patti Smith
In: 'Consistent Poetry Art', Schwitters' contribution to 'Magazine G', No. 3, 1924, ed. Hans Richter.
Kurt Schwitters
I absolutely love being a mother. It's been a blessing. It's fun and it's hard, but it's absolutely amazing.
Keisha Castle-Hughes
I have cousins in North Carolina who talk in that old Southern style of 'yakking,' if you will. All the black men in my life when I was a boy talked that way, and I love that kind of talk.
James McBride
We ain't speak, clicking heat is our Morse code.
Ka
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.
Ben Lerner
