Cate Marvin Quotes

United States, Poet
November 20, 1969

Cate Marvin is an American poet. She graduated from Marlboro College, University of Houston, University of Iowa, and University of Cincinnati with a Ph.D. She has taught at the College of Staten Island, City University of New York and Columbia University. She teaches in the English Department of Colby College.

To think of writing poetry as a "career" is not only ridiculous, it's dangerous. To the imagination. To the way one thinks of art. The reason poetry as a genre is so special is because it cannot be made a commodity.

Cate Marvin
- Writing
- Art
- Reason
Because I wake up late, my day is often short. I'm much more active in the evenings, during which I alternately read, write, needle-point, smoke, email, and despair over my decision last June to put my television and DVD player out on the street because I wasn't getting enough work done.

Cate Marvin
- Writing
- Decision
- Player

I consider poetry my vocation, not my "career." My career is as a university professor; that's what pays the bills.

Cate Marvin
- Pay
- Careers
- University
The fiction writer has a lot of balls to juggle. Setting, pacing, dialogue, and so on. And let's not forget: plot. That was always a hard one for me. And I always had this spastic tendency to wrap up a story before I'd seen it the whole way through, a sort of writer's pre-ejaculatory tendency: "The End!"

Cate Marvin