...few young poets [are] testing their poems against the ear. They're writing for the page, and the page, let me tell you, is a cold bed.
Interpretation
Writing poetry for print lacks the warmth and connection of performance.
Stanley Kunitz highlights the importance of performance and auditory experience in poetry. He suggests that many young poets focus too much on the written word, neglecting the vital connection that comes from speaking their poetry aloud and engaging with an audience, which can create a more intimate and impactful experience.
In practice
In a workshop about poetic expression, this quote can illustrate the importance of oral delivery.
When you look back on a lifetime and think of what has been given to the world by your presence, your fugitive presence, inevitably you think of your art, whatever it may be, as the gift you have made to the world in acknowledgment of the gift you have been given, which is the life itself... That work is not an expression of the desire for praise or recognition, or prizes, but the deepest manifestation of your gratitiude for the gift of life.
Some poems present themselves as cliffs that need to be climbed. Others are so defensive that when you approach their enclosure you half expect to be met by a snarling dog at the gate. Still others want to smother you with their sticky charms.
Writer's block is a natural affliction. Writers who have never experienced it have something wrong with them. It means there isn't enough friction-that they aren't making enough of an effort to reconcile the contradictions of life. All you get is sweet monotonous flow. Writer's block is nothing to commit suicide over. It simply indicates some imbalance between your experience and your art, and I think that's constructive.
I want to write poems that are natural, luminous, deep, spare. I dream of an art so transparent that you can look through and see the world.
The heart breaks and breaks and lives by breaking it is necessary to go through dark and deeper dark and not to turn
The universe is a continuous web. Touch it at any point and the whole web quivers.
Right angles don't attract me. Nor straight, hard and inflexible lines created by man.
I don't want people at my shows to come out and say, 'I just saw a cool show.' I want them to say, 'I had fun at the show.' I want it to be a collaborative thing and be part of the audience and have them be part of me. I try to interact with everyone there and have them be equal to me because they are.
All methods are sacred if they are internally necessary. All methods are sins if they are not justified by internal necessity.
It is the task of the translator to release in his own language that pure language that is under the spell of another, to liberate the language imprisoned in a work in his re-creation of that work.
Do I feel that white directors have to tell only white stories? No. Do I feel that black filmmakers should only tell stories about black people? No. If we say that, then that means Asian people cannot write about anybody but Asians. I don't think a woman should only write about women.
Giving a camera to Diane Arbus is like putting a live grenade in the hands of a child.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.