A Quote by Jane Hirshfield
Poetry is a release of something previously unknown into the visible. You write to invite that, to make of yourself a gathering of the unexpected and, with luck, of the unexpectable.
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If something I make succeeds, people say it was luck. But I don't just throw myself into the unknown. I research my subjects and listen constantly to what the characters have to say. Luck comes into it, but the story is made by them.
I believe it's impossible to write good poetry without reading. Reading poetry goes straight to my psyche and makes me want to write. I meet the muse in the poems of others and invite her to my poems. I see over and over again, in different ways, what is possible, how the perimeters of poetry are expanding and making way for new forms.
To approach the stranger is to invite the unexpected, release a new force, let the genie out of the bottle. It is to start a new train of events that is beyond your control.
With Jubilee I had a natural interest to write about something on the opposite end of human experience - a real celebration of release and joy, which is in some ways an unexpected theme for the indie rock genre in general.
Memoir is a unique opportunity to revisit yourself. I don't mean by memory. I mean in the revision process. You don't just write a chapter and that's it. You must constantly return to it. You must dote on it. And even if it's saying something ugly about who you are, you have to find the poetry in it. You have to find the poetry in yourself.
To write poetry, like sincere poetry, it is like performing heart surgery on yourself without anesthesia...in public...You are peeling back layers. You are dissecting yourself...You do not know what they [the audience] is going to do when you reach into yourself and rip out your organs to be displayed
If there's something left in me, it's better to go down fighting. You've got to have a bit of self-belief and confidence in yourself. I might know that I have only a little chance but I'm a good rider and I try to make it happen. You have to give luck a swift kick in the behind so it falls on your side. You have to make your own luck.
There is poetry in fiction. If you cannot see it and feel it when you write, you need to step back and examine what you are doing wrong. If you have not figured out how to write a simple declarative sentence and make it sing with that poetry, you are not yet ready to write an entire book.
I want to welcome folks to poetry, especially those who may have previously felt unwelcome; I want to celebrate everyone who is trying to make sense of this world through poetry the way I try to.
I write to invite the voices in, to watch the angel wrestle, to feel the devil gather on its haunches and rise. I write to hear myself breathing. I write to be doing something while I wait to be called to my appointment with death. I write to be done writing. I write because writing is fun.
There have always been great defenses of poetry, and I've tried to write mine, and I think all of my work and criticism is a defense of poetry to try and keep something alive in poetry.
Can you collect chaos? Not collecting, that is the ultimate gathering. What can you gather without gathering yourself.
I have a luck cat in my arms,
it spins threads of luck.
Luck cat, luck cat,
make for me three things:
make for me a golden ring,
to tell me that I am lucky;
make for me a mirror
to tell me that I am beautiful;
make for me a fan
to waft away my cumbersome thoughts.
Luck cat, luck cat,
spin for me some news of my future!
The best luck of all is the luck you make for yourself.
Anyone in pursuit of art is responding to a desire to make visible that which is not, to offer the unknown self to others.
But most love poetry is awful; nobody knows how to write good love poetry either. But that's not a reason not to write love poetry. Some of the best poetry ever written has been love poetry, and some of the greatest poetry ever written has been political poetry.
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