A Quote by Gord Downie

I'm not a rock star writing poetry. I don't feel like a rock star and I don't know what one is, actually. I'm a goalie/poet or a hotel guest/poet or a father/poet.

Gord Downie

Quote Topics

Actually Father Feel Guest Hotel Know Like Poet Poetry Rock Rock Star Star Writing Writing Poetry

Quote Author

Gord Downie
Canadian - Musician
February 6, 1964 - October 17, 2017

If the poet wants to be a poet, the poet must force the poet to revise. If the poet doesn't wish to revise, let the poet abandon poetry and take up stamp-collecting or real estate.

Donald Hall

Why do people want to know exactly who I am? Am I a poet? Am I this or that? I've always made people wary. First they called me a rock poet. Then I was a poet that dabbled in rock. Then I was a rock person who dabbled in art.

Patti Smith

Lyrics became important for a while in the late Seventies. Patti Smith was a poet and a rock star, as much one as the other, the distinctions were a bit blurred and then you get swept up in it. Punk poet, it's a good enough term.

John Cooper Clarke

I started out as a poet. I've always been a poet since I was 7 or 8. And so I feel myself to be fundamentally a poet who got into writing novels.

Alice Walker

Rock and roll kind of screwed up my voice poetically. I found myself having this 'Beat' voice in my poems. It was like this self-fulfilled prophecy because everybody was calling me this rock poet, this Beat poet.

Jim Carroll

All poetry has to do is to make a strong communication. All the poet has to do is listen. The poet is not an important fellow. There will also be another poet.

Stevie Smith

Another trouble with poetry - and I'm gonna stop the list at two - is the presence of presumptuousness in poetry, the sense you get in a poem that the poet takes for granted an interest on the reader's part in the poet's autobiographical life, in the poet's memories, problems, difficulties and even minor perceptions.

Billy Collins

When I go to a sci-fi convention, oh God, it's the closest thing to being a rock star I will ever know in this life. I want to be a rock star, don't you? It's a good thing to be, a rock star.

Nathan Fillion

I've seen guys on the street who look the part of a rock star just as much as any rock star. If you feel it and you believe it, then you can get away with it. Rock on!

Scott Weiland

One of the appeals of William Carlos Williams to me is that he was many different kinds of poet. He tried out many different forms in his own way of, more or less, formlessness. He was also a poet who could be - he was a love poet, he was a poet of the natural order and he was also a political poet.

W. S. Di Piero

Poetry is probably the one field of writing in which it is a mistake to try to psych out editors. In fact, specific marketing advice can sometimes harm the novice poet by enticing him to pursue fashions. The poet's best hope is to sound like nobody else, The finest, most enduring poetry constructs a marketplace of its own.

X. J. Kennedy

Loneliness is necessary for pure poetry. When someone intrudes into the poet's life (and any sudden personal contact, whether in the bed or in the heart, is an intrusion) the poet loses his or her balance for a moment, slips into being what he or she is, uses his or her poetry as one would use money or sympathy. The person who writes the poetry emerges, tentatively, like a hermit crab from a conch shell. The poet, for that instant, ceases to be a dead person.

Jack Spicer

It's a big thing to call yourself a poet. All I can say is that I have always written poems. I don't think I'm interested in any discussion about whether I'm a good poet, a bad poet or a great poet. But I am sure, I want to write great poems. I think every poet should want that.

Clive James

I consider myself a poet first and a musician second. I live like a poet and I'll die like a poet.

Bob Dylan

I'm not a rock star. Sure I am, to a certain extent because of the situation, but when kids ask me how it feels to be a rock star, I say leave me alone, I'm not a rock star. I'm not in it for the fame, I'm in it because I like to play.