June 2013
29 posts
“We might say that three qualities are necessary to write superb lyric poetry. First, the writer must have something of a gift: she must be able to make music, command metaphors, compress sense, write melodiously when the situation demands and gratingly when need be. She must be versed in irony; she must have control of tone. But there is more – a second requirement. She must also have something to say. There must be some region of her experience that has transfixed her and that she feels compelled to put into words and illuminate. She must burn to attack some issue, must want to unbind some knot, tighten it, or maybe send a blade directly through its core.”
— - Mark Edmundson, “Poetry Slam: Or, the decline of American Verse” Harper’s July 2013
“Tous les changements, même les plus souhaités ont leur mélancolie, car ce que nous quittons, c’est une partie de nous-mêmes; il faut mourir à une vie pour entrer dans une autre.”
— Anatole France
“Show us how happy it makes you to write a poem.”
—Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
BLIZZARD
Fauve
“Tu nous entends l’Amour ? Tu nous entends? Si tu nous entends il faut que tu reviennes parce qu’on prêt maintenant, ça y est.”
“Life is energy, and energy is creativity. And even when we as individuals pass on, the energy is retained in the work of art, locked in it and awaiting release if only someone will take the time and the care to unlock it.”
—Joyce Carol Oates, 1978 interview with the Paris Review
