A Quote by Margaret Atwood
I feel that the task of criticizing my poetry is best left to others (i.e. critics) and would much rather have it take place after I am dead. If at all.
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My job is to give my best, and where my journey would take me is something that I have left to God. I am not much of a planner; I am more of a doer.
I'll take no charity! What I get I'll earn by taking it. I would feel no pleasure it being given to me, any more than a huntsman would take pleasure being made a present of a dead fox, in place of getting a run across country after it.
We realize that by criticizing Jewish fundamentalism we are criticizing a part of the past that we love. We wish that members of every human grouping would criticize their own past, even before criticizing others.
Writing is a hellish task, best snuck up on, whacked on the head, robbed and left for dead.
After all, one knows one's weak points so well, that it's rather bewildering to have the critics overlook them and invent others.
Critics hang around and wait for others to make mistakes. But the real doers of the world have not time for criticizing others. They are too busy doing, making mistakes, improving, making progress.
I would not recommend poetry as a career. In the first place, it's impossible in this time and place - in this culture - to make poetry a career. The writing of poetry is one thing. It's an obsession, the scratching of a divine itch, and has nothing to do with money. You can, however, make a career out of being a poet by teaching, traveling around, and giving lectures. It's a thin living at best.
What constitutes success? She who has achieved success has lived well; laughed often and loved much; has gained the respect of little children; has filled her niche and accomplished her task; has left the world better than she found it; has always looked for the best in others and given the best she had.
After I am dead, I would rather have men ask why Cato has no monument than why he had one.
I think the best American poetry is the poetry that utilizes the resources of poetry rather than exploits the defects or triumphs of the poet's personality.
You find very few critics who approach their job with a combination of information and enthusiasm and humility that makes for a good critic. But there is nothing wrong with critics as long as people don't pay any attention to them. I mean, nobody wants to put them out of a job and a good critic is not necessarily a dead critic. It's just that people take what a critic says as a fact rather than an opinion, and you have to know whether the opinion of the critic is informed or uninformed, intelligent of stupid -- but most people don't take the trouble.
After Pope, in the beginning of Romanticism, people developed the idea that imagination rather than reason was a special form of knowledge and its best expression is through poetry. Therefore, poetry should not try to do the stuff that mere prose does: convey information or make arguments about ideas.
When 'Destroyer' was first released, we got a strong backlash from our hardcore fans. After six months, the album was dead in the water. The critics didn't think much of it, either.
What drew me to politics in the first place was the fact that I wanted to have a place to take a stand and use my voice to express what I believed in. But I've no longer got any political aspirations. I feel that as a politician, fifty per cent of people would hate you before you even left the house.
Obviously, this isn't the time in my life that I would have chosen to do this, but I feel like life gives you these challenges for a reason. I feel so happy and glad to be in the place that I am. I really feel blessed. This is something I need to face and take control of.
It is always wise to remember that others will survive even if we are not there taking care of them. I found out that I feel so much better when I take an hour a day, just to take care of me and love myself. It keeps me from feeling so put upon by everything and everybody and helps me get through the day. By taking my hour early in the morning, I feel like I get my love first and I get it when I am at my best.
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