First, I do not sit down at my desk to put into verse something that is already clear in my mind. If it were clear in my mind, I should have no incentive or need to write about it.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I have not the slightest pretension to call my verses poetry; I write now and then for no other purpose than to relieve depression or to improve my English.
Mostly the thought and the verse come inseparably. In my poem Poetics, it's as close as I come to telling how I do it.
I can work on a verse for a very long time before realising it's not any good and then, and only then, can I discard it.
What I do say is that I can write verse, and that the writing of verse in strict form is the best possible training for writing good prose.
The problem with writing a book in verse is, to be successful, it has to sound like you knocked it off on a rainy Friday afternoon. It has to sound easy. When you can do it, it helps tremendously because it's a thing that forces kids to read on. You have this unconsummated feeling if you stop.
The one who writes a poem writes it above all because verse writing is an extraordinary accelerator of conscience, of thinking, of comprehending the universe.
I think there's one thing which distinguishes our art - we don't consider. We don't think. We write a little verse because it comes to us.
Poetry says the things that I can't say. I read a lot, but I never write it.
I've been writing a lot of poetry recently. It helps me think and work things out.
Poetry should surprise by a fine excess and not by singularity, it should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.
No opposing quotes found.