A Quote by W. H. Auden

I used to try and concentrate the poem so much that there wasn't a word that wasn't essential. This leads to becoming boring and constipated. — © W. H. Auden
I used to try and concentrate the poem so much that there wasn't a word that wasn't essential. This leads to becoming boring and constipated.
The difference between 'lighght' and another type of poem with more words is that it doesn't have a reading process. Even a five-word poem has a beginning, middle, and end. A one-word poem doesn't. You can see it all at once. It's instant.
That it is statistically easier for low-IQ people to kick an addiction than it is for high-IQ people...That boring activities become, perversely, much less boring if you concentrate intently on them.
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
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.
They have dog food for constipated dogs. If your dog is constipated, why screw up a good thing? Stay indoors and let 'em bloat!
I try to write very fast. I don't revise very much. I write the poem in one sitting. Just let it rip. It's usually over in twenty to forty minutes. I'll go back and tinker with a word or two, change a line for some metrical reason weeks later, but I try to get the whole thing just done.
I try not to pay much attention to what people say-I just try to concentrate on the game.
Look at Jesus Christ. Every time he was in trouble he used the Word of God. When he was tempted he used the Word. When he was suffering on the cross he used the Word.
This word "redemption," what is it about this word? Is it tangible? Do you know when it has happened? Is it necessary in a drama? Does it make a character boring? Does everyone agree on a character being "redeemed?" Or is it a word that is so subjective and polarizing and insignificant in modern television? It is a word that has been given, quite possibly, far too much significance, when it is truly ambiguous and meaningless in a drama. I have personally grown to loathe that word in literature.
It's true there are a lot of frustrations, but it's down to me to try to put them to the side and concentrate on what's essential to me, my game and also to adapt to the opponent.
I think you can perform any poem. But what I believe is that the best examples of spoken word poetry I've ever seen, are spoken word poems that, when you see them, you're aware of the fact they need to be performed. That there's something about that poem that you would not be able to understand if you were just reading it on a piece of paper.
It does not need that a poem should be long. Every word was once a poem.
I'm old-fashioned enough to really still believe that the poem is an object to be memorized, venerated... I still believe in that kind of poem. A lot of poets today don't, they want to get away from the poem as object. They want something looser. Unfortunately, a lot of it is boring to me.
In high school I was leafing through an anthology that our teachers had given up and I found a poem, I go, "That's so strange. This poem looks so much like my grandfather's poem."
I never think of my audience when I write a poem. I try to write out of whatever is haunting me; in order for a poem to feel authentic, I have to feel I'm treading on very dangerous ground, which can mean that the resulting revelations may prove hurtful to other people. The time for thinking about that kind of guilt or any collective sense of responsibility, however, occurs much later in the creative process, after the poem is finished.
I could sum up the future in one word, and that word is 'boring.' The future is going to be boring.
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