A Quote by Paul Gilbert

A Herd of Turtles' is the only song on 'Behold Electric Guitar' that is not strictly instrumental. But instead of singing, I am reciting a poem. My poem is about overcoming challenges.

Paul Gilbert

Quote Topics

About Am Behold Challenges Electric Electric Guitar Guitar Herd Instead Instrumental Only Only Son Overcoming Overcoming Challenges Poem Reciting Singing Song Strictly Turtles

Quote Author

Paul Gilbert
American - Musician
Born: November 6, 1966

I waited until the end of the 'Behold Electric Guitar' recording sessions to record 'A Herd of Turtles,' as I knew the unusual arrangement might raise some eyebrows.

Paul Gilbert

All things in the world are singing a song, reciting a poem, inaudibly, to their surroundings, to the things they encounter.

Phil Elvrum

The subject of the poem usually dictates the rhythm or the rhyme and its form. Sometimes, when you finish the poem and you think the poem is finished, the poem says, "You're not finished with me yet," and you have to go back and revise, and you may have another poem altogether. It has its own life to live.

Maya Angelou

Sometimes the only way I know how to work through something is by writing a poem. And sometimes I get to the end of the poem and look back and go, 'Oh, that's what this is all about,' and sometimes I get to the end of the poem and haven't solved anything, but at least I have a new poem out of it.

Sarah Kay

Do not wait for a poem; a poem is too fast for you. Do not wait for the poem; run with the poem and then write the poem.

Juan Felipe Herrera

What I try to do is to go into a poem - and one writes them, of course, poem by poem - to go into each poem, first of all without having any sense whatsoever of where it's going to end up.

Paul Muldoon

What I try to do is to go into a poem - and one writes them, of course, poem by poem - to go into each poem, first of all without having any sense whatsoever of where it's going to end up

Paul Muldoon

I feel like I am in the service of the poem. The poem isn't something I make. The poem is something I serve.

Jane Hirshfield

If a poem is written well, it was written with the poet's voice and for a voice. Reading a poem silently instead of saying a poem is like the difference between staring at sheet music and actually humming or playing the music on an instrument.

Robert Pinsky

I keep feeling that there isn't one poem being written by any one of us - or a book or anything like that. The whole life of us writers, the whole product I guess I mean, is the one long poem - a community effort if you will. It's all the same poem. It doesn't belong to any one writer - it's God's poem perhaps. Or God's people's poem.

Anne Sexton

For poetry is, I believe, always an act of the spirit. The poem teaches us something while we make it. The poem makes you as you make the poem, and your making of the poem requires all your capacities of thought, feeling, analysis, and synthesis.

May Sarton

Often when I write poetry I don't quite know what I'm saying myself. I mean, I can't restate the poem. The meaning of the poem is the poem.

Pattiann Rogers

A good poem is not completely a poem until it has received a critical response that grows out of the poem in an almost biological way.

Michael Longley

A successful poem says what a poet wants to say, and more, with particular finality. The remarks he makes about his poems are incidental when the poem is good, or embarrassing or absurd when it is bad and he is not permitted to say how the good poem is good, and may never know how the bad poem is bad. It is better to write about other people's poetry.

Randall Jarrell

When a poem might become a song, then certain parts are repeated and might become a refrain or a chorus, so they change in that way. But it's more the nature of the words and what they're saying that determines whether it's a poem or a song.