A Quote by Edith Södergran

I don't create poetry, I create myself, for me my poems are a way to me. — © Edith Södergran
I don't create poetry, I create myself, for me my poems are a way to me.
My poems are certainly in the lyric tradition, but perhaps a reader can tell me more precisely who I am as a poet. How can I be so old and not know? I have always been deeply grateful for the urge to write, the desire to create, that's certain. Writing has always been the way I make sense of life. Perhaps my poems define me, rather than the other way around. They do constantly surprise me.
I create music; I create painting; I create whatever I want to create. I create, what you say, clothes. I create, I don't know, dance move. I create anything.
I was tired and I had overworked myself and burnt myself out. So I went to Egypt by myself. When I saw what was built there, it made me understand how powerful we are, that we can create anything. And I felt like I needed to create things that were timeless too.
If I'm still wistful about On the Road, I look on the rest of the Kerouac oeuvre--the poems, the poems!--in horror. Read Satori in Paris lately? But if I had never read Jack Kerouac's horrendous poems, I never would have had the guts to write horrendous poems myself. I never would have signed up for Mrs. Safford's poetry class the spring of junior year, which led me to poetry readings, which introduced me to bad red wine, and after that it's all just one big blurry condemned path to journalism and San Francisco.
Every story I create, creates me. I write to create myself. Every story I write adds to me a little, changes me a little, forces me to reexamine an attitude or belief, causes me to research and learn, helps me to understand people and grow.
Every story I create, creates me. I write to create myself.
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.
My main intention was to not only create collections that defined myself and style, but to also create things that my fans identify with me and feel a belonging to.
The duration of love in a being always depends upon the loved one. I create an emotion in you, as you create one in me. You do not create it in yourself.
Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create - so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him. He must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency he is not really alive unless he is creating.
Hate me. Devastate me. Annihilate me. Re-create me. Re-create me. Won't you, won't you won't you re-create me.
I wrote those poems for myself, as a way of being a soldier here in this country. I didn't know the poems would travel. I didn't go to Lebanon until two years ago, but people told me that many Arabs had memorized these poems and translated them into Arabic.
I feel like at the end of the day, as entertaining as movies are, when you're part of them in a way, it's this beautiful art form and that's what it feels like for me. I'm not a painter, but I can express myself visually in a way that allows me to artistically create.
I'm trained in the theater, and acting, for me, is about the imaginative life I create for myself, not about basing it on something real. I think that whatever I create becomes the reality for the audience.
I'm not able to tell you what the best song is yet, because there's more to come. I feel that in me. I can still feel the burning energy and the desire to create and create and create.
For me, prose is never a poem. Because with prose there are so very few tools to create the music. And one of the most important tools missing is the ability to create silences, as you can in poetry by how you fashion the lines and breaks within the lines and stanzas.
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