My ideal reader is somebody who reads my poems out loud.

- James Arthur

If poems very different from my own bring pleasure to a group of readers, who am I to say that the poems should have been written differently?

- James Arthur

For me, poetry is a way of thinking, and like many poets, I'm driven by the idea of trying to find the impossible, perfect words: the words that will…

- James Arthur

I think that being mindful of your own biases tends to lead you into ambiguity, not clarity, and that following those ambiguities is the only way to …

- James Arthur

It makes sense to me that the polyglot wouldn't know what language he dreamed in.

- James Arthur

It's not realistic to imagine that any poem will last forever. Our species won't last forever! We try to capture and preserve our impressions of real…

- James Arthur

Start listening to what you say. Are your comments and ideas negative? You aren't going become positive if you always say negative things. Do you hea…

- James Arthur

As a species, we create tools to control our environment. What excites my imagination is wilderness: our materials' ability to escape our control.

- James Arthur

Poetry isn't an efficient tool for preserving experience, any more than it's an efficient mode of communication, but who says that it should be effic…

- James Arthur