Further notes on The best american poetics Mark Strand says: I believe that all poetry is formal in that it exists within limits, limits that are either inherited by tradition or limits that language itself imposes. Form it should be remembered is a word that has several meanings, some which are near opposites. form has to…
Tag: Wallace Stevens
Sometimes
Perhaps – – the truth depends on a walk around the lake …
Finish the poem first, then worry, if you have to, about being right or sane
Lectures on poetry & writing by Richard Hugo (cont.) Assumptions lie behind the work of all writers. Words love the ridicules areas of our minds. It is important that a poet not question her assumptions, at least not in the middle of composition. Finish the poem first, then worry, if you have to, about being right…
Chasing a way to write
Lectures on poetry & writing by Richard Hugo (cont.) If you are a private poet, then your vocabulary is limited by your obsessions. You are after those words you can own and ways of putting in phrases and lines that are yours by right of obsessive musical deed. Your triggering subjects are those that ignite…
The Triggering Town
Lectures on poetry & writing by Richard Hugo (cont.) I caution against communication because once language exist only to convey information, it is dying. In news articles the relation of the words to the subject is a strong one. The relation of the words to the writer is weak. (Since the majority of your reading…
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
BY WALLACE STEVENS I Among twenty snowy mountains, The only moving thing Was the eye of the blackbird. II I was of three minds, Like a tree In which there are three blackbirds. III The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds. It was a small part of the pantomime. IV A man…
We stumble – We fall – We fail –
– And so desire to progress, to become better poets, to eradicate a disease, to become better people, to perfect that which is perpetually imperfect. On Fear by Mary Ruefle
apropos Foremothers
The core problem of lacking foremothers might simply be this: it’s even more difficult for a woman than for a man to say: i want to become a writer i want to become an artist i want – i can? Believing in creative powers, believing them to be strong enough to be taken seriously;…
Perfect Reader
A week ago I made a post on Mary Ruefle – here she is again: I spend all day in my office, reading a poem by Stevens, pretending I wrote it myself, which is what happens when someone is lonely and decides to go shopping and meets another customer and they buy the same thing. But I come to…
sub rosa 