A Quote by Marie Howe

Memory is a poet, not an historian.

Marie Howe

Quote Topics

Historian Memory Poet

Quote Author

Marie Howe
American - Poet
Born: 1950

So, then, the best of the historian is subject to the poet; for whatsoever action or faction, whatsoever counsel, policy, or war-stratagem the historian is bound to recite, that may the poet, if he list, with his imitation make his own, beautifying it both for further teaching and more delighting, as it pleaseth him; having all, from Dante’s Heaven to his Hell, under the authority of his pen.

Philip Sidney

It is one thing to write as poet and another to write as a historian: the poet can recount or sing about things not as they were, but as they should have been, and the historian must write about them not as they should have been, but as they were, without adding or subtracting anything from the truth.

Miguel de Cervantes

When the exceptional historian comes along, you have a poet.

Melvin B. Tolson

My sense of the poet is classical - the poet is one who makes poems. In each book, I develop and repeat certain general themes - time, place, memory, God, history, class, race, beauty, love, poetry, identity. The core identity is the poet making the poems.

Lawrence Joseph

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

Creative memory is the historian's most subtle opponent.

Mason Cooley

Viereck became a historian, specializing in modern Russia, and a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet.

Tom Reiss

. . . What role does historiography play in the way a society and culture "remembers" past events? Does the historian have a moral or civic responsibility to this project of memory that ought to influence the way he or she engages in historical practice? Should moral concerns influence the historian's choice of subject matter, of issues to discuss, of evidence to use?

Michael L Morgan

A Poet, Naturalist, and Historian, Who left scarcely any style of writing untouched, And touched nothing that he did not adorn.

Samuel Johnson

My own journey in becoming a poet began with memory - with the need to record and hold on to what was being lost. One of my earliest poems, 'Give and Take,' was about my Aunt Sugar, how I was losing her to her memory loss.

Natasha Trethewey

My own journey in becoming a poet began with memory - with the need to record and hold on to what was being lost. One of my earliest poems, Give and Take, was about my Aunt Sugar, how I was losing her to her memory loss.

Natasha Trethewey

'Wolf Hall' attempts to duplicate not the historian's chronology but the way memory works: in leaps, loops, flashes.

Hilary Mantel

Wolf Hall attempts to duplicate not the historian's chronology but the way memory works: in leaps, loops, flashes.

Hilary Mantel

A painter must compensate the natural deficiencies of his art. He has but one sentence to utter, but one moment to exhibit. He cannot, like the poet or historian, expatiate, and impress the mind.

Joshua Reynolds

How much pleasure they lose (and even the pleasures of heroic poesy are not unprofitable) who take away the liberty of a poet, and fetter his feet in the shackles of a historian.