05-22-2008, 04:37 AM
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From A Book, Little Gems About the Process of Poetry
From A Book, Little Gems About the Process of Poetry
Examples from a new book, "Quote Poet Unquote," give insights into the poetic process.
 DAVID BIESPIEL
Special to The Oregonian
I was intending to write this month about the sensual poems of the Lebanese-born poet Venus Khoury-Ghata when -- poof! -- the dang thing got eaten by the dog of Microsoft Word. Forgive me: I couldn't face re-creating it. I'll return to her in a month or so when I've recovered.
Luckily minutes after that disaster, like a gift from the Parnassians or the U.S. Postal Service, Dennis O'Driscoll's "Quote Poet Unquote: Contemporary Quotations on Poets and Poetry" arrived on my doorstep in a neat brown package.
Books of quotations are one of my guilty pleasures. This month, rather introduce a poem, I present some of the juicier quips, bumper-stickerish insights and smart thinking about poetry from this fun compendium. Enjoy:
- "The first great task of the aspiring poet -- the task of the imagination -- is to create the self that will write the poems." Stanley Kunitz
- "All white space in and around a poem is silence, not paper." Jorie Graham
- "Poetry is not a matter of feelings, it is a matter of language. It is language which creates feelings." Umberto Eco
- "Most poetry written at any given time is bad, and all poetry written at any given time is new. Together, these facts can make it seem that poetry is always in decline." Adam Kirsch
- "When asked what I write about, I like to reply that 'about' is the wrong word, it suggests the wrong relationship. I prefer to say 'from' or 'toward' or occasionally 'through.' " Kathleen Jamie
- "A poet cannot refuse language, choose another medium. But the poet can re-fuse language given to him or her, bend and torque it into an instrument for connection instead of dominance." Adrienne Rich
- "No individual poem can stop a war -- that's what diplomacy is supposed to do. But poetry is an independent ambassador for conscience: It answers to no one, it crosses borders without a passport, and it speaks the truth. That's why, despite talk about its marginalization, it is one of the most powerful arts." Ellen Hinsey
- "Anyone who begins a sentence "as a poet I" is probably not a poet. It's like calling yourself a saint." Michael Longley
- "Poets seem to have less trouble writing than living. Their poems tend to be their happiness." Stanley Plumly
- "Poetry is more a matter of cadence than content. Intonation is its deepest mystery." Seamus Heaney
- "Poetry is not written out of despair, which in its pure form is absolutely mute. The poetry that seems to come out of despair is actually a means of staving it off." Christian Wiman
- "Alas, the world is full of poets who are accessible . . . and yet nobody reads them either. Could it be because they insist on telling the reader something he or she already knows?" John Ashbery
- "My own prescription for making poetry popular in the schools would be to ban it -- with possession treated as a serious misdemeanor, and dealing as a felony." Clive James
- "I have never been one of the people who feel it essential to increase the audience for poetry. I feel that the people who need it find it." Louise Glck
Selections from " Quote Poet Unquote: Contemporary Quotations on Poets and Poetry " (Copper Canyon Press, edited by Dennis O'Driscoll, $18 paperback, 300 pages).
David Biespiel's most recent book of poems is " Wild Civility." He is the editor of Poetry Northwest. His column on poetry appears the first Sunday of each month.
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