early risers

The dawn is a term for the early morning used by poets and other people who don’t have to get up.

—Oliver Herford

flash to ash

The poem composed in a flash, and any revision would leave only ash.

dead dead

He went back to revise the poem not realizing rigor mortis had set in.

from other tongues

Often it’s non-native speakers who write the most beautiful English sentences.

root cellar

You haven’t gone down to basement of this poem. There's a root cellar with a door hanging by one hinge and some cobwebs waiting to be pushed open.

worth the effort

Spend the time revising this poem, or just spin up a new one.

gifting library

Don’t ask me how many books I own—ask how many I’ve read and passed on.

poet praising poet

I love a good homage poem—a poet praising another poet—knowing how hard it is to write even a few poems that make themselves known and at the same time matter.

other voice

I am asserting that poetry is irreducible to ideas and system. It is the other voice. Not the word of history or of antihistory but the voice that, in history, always says something else—the same something since the beginning. I don’t know how to define this voice or explain what it is that constitutes this difference, this tone which, though it doesn’t set it altogether apart, makes it unique and distinct. I will say only that it is strangeness and familiarity in person. We need only hear it to recognize it.

—Octavio Paz, “Latin-American Poetry,” Convergences: Essays on Art and Literature (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1987)

stands aside

The poet stands aside: Someone standing in the shadow of the doorway, waiting for hours for who knows what.

light fare

He’d tasted some of this, some of that,
but he never made a meal of one book,
nor had he ever feasted for days
at the banquet of an author’s oeuvre.

is quantum

All translation is quantum.

reel off

When you realize you can really write, I mean you can reel off line after line effortlessly, that’s when you need to set some limits.

more than speech

When reading your poetry consider: enunciation, pace, pauses (silence), tone and modulation. Some poets aren’t blessed with pleasing voices, but they can thoughtfully manage their speech patterns to better present their poetry.

inspired reader

A poet’s function—do not be startled by this remark—is not to experience the poetic state: that is a private affair. His function is to create it in others. The poet is recognized—or at least everyone recognizes his own poet—by the simple fact that he causes his reader to become “inspired.” Positively speaking, inspiration is a graceful attribute with which the reader endows his poet: the reader sees in us the transcendent merits of virtues and graces that develop in him. He seeks and finds in us the wondrous cause of his own wonder.

—Paul Valéry, “Poetry of Abstract Thought” (1939), Toward the Open Field: Poets on the Art of Poetry, 1800-1950 (Wesleyan U. Press, 2004), edited by Melissa Kwasny

empty basket

Each time I passed the poet busking in the square he seemed to be getting thinner.

detail minded to death

A writer is someone who even fusses over the font style of his gravestone.

workshop is

Workshop: Eight to ten people talking about a poem none of them could’ve written.

kinds of containers

A poem to me is a container whether it be benign like a water pitcher or dangerous like a pipe bomb.

theme and form

I always have two things in my head—I always have a theme and the form. The form looks for the theme, the theme looks for the form, and when they come together you’re able to write.

—W.H. Auden, “Obiter Dicta,” W.H. Auden: The Life of a Poet (Michael O’Mara Books Ltd, 1995) by Charles Osborne

in place of a poem

The mountain of text that took the place of a poem.

[A wry riff on Stevens]

no homilies here

There is no place for homilies in poetry.