they don't know

If you were waiting for an audience, remember in this arena most people don’t know what poetry is.

high intonation

For most people poetry is like opera: something beautiful being sung with high intonation, but whether someone is to be betrothed or someone is being entombed, none know.

and one tree

When you feel paralyzed by the pointlessness of temporary fashion, or when dull or predictable work is lauded, try new things that will surprise you as you work for the joy of the process, remembering that all a writer needs are four true readers & one of them can be a tree.

—Brenda Hillman, from “Dear emerging, pre-emerging & post-emerging poets,” In a Few Minutes Before Later (Wesleyan U. Press, 2022)

remembered poems

Poets make poems but readers make remembered poems.

always be closing

At poetry readings, I’ve seen poets who can’t even sell a few copies after having read from their book(s). This should be a cause for concern. You should be able to close the deal in the room.

for the few

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9 out of every 10,000 Americans prefer Poetry.

poor po

To tweak a line from the Gospels, "The poor po will always be with us."

pretend no one will see

She had recently turned seventy, which may have been weighing on her more than she thought. Many friends she would show her work to are dead, she'd noticed lately. “So it’s like, who cares? You have to have someone waiting for you.” And readers? “If I think about them, I can’t write anything. When I write a poem, I have to pretend no one will see it.”

I asked what emotion was most productive for her work—sadness? happiness? “Loneliness,” she answered quickly.

Her best writing comes when, she said, she is “in my nightgown for days, not thinking about anyone else. It takes a couple of days just thrashing through the brambles to get to any type of clearing, and it’s very painful. It’s frustrating, you see all your limitations, but a lot of what is happening is the unconscious is just waiting to see if you if you mean it. I like it once I settle in, but the borders are tough.” Once she passes into the other state, “that’s the best feeling in the world—we’re utterly ourselves and we’re nobody.”

Marie Howe being quoted in The Work of Art: how something comes from nothing (Penguin Press, 2024) by Adam Moss

book before horse

Poets more concerned over publications than whether they’re read.

read local hear local

Read poetry locally. Hear poetry locally.

do one thing well

Writers and artists who get stuck in a signature style.

dead or alive

The articles that claim poetry is dead or in decline are counterbalanced by those touting that it’s thriving in our culture or reminding us how important poetry is to our lives.

secrets of beauty

I have just seen at Picasso’s house a drawing on a large canvas that depicts a mass grave. It was as if the drawing was deepened by innumerable lines that the painter had previously erased. These lines bear witness to a search—not for a better line, but for the only line that will do.

Poetry is not holy just because it speaks of things that are holy. Poetry is not beautiful just because it speaks of things that are beautiful. If we are asked why it is beautiful and holy, we must answer as Joan of Arc did when she had been interrogated for too long: “Next question.”
Beauty is lame. Poetry is lame. It is from a struggle with the angel that the poet emerges—limping. This limp is what gives the poet his charm.

The masses can love a poet only by misunderstanding him.

Poetry works like lightning. Lightning strips a shepherd bare and carries his clothes several miles away. It imprints on a ploughman’s shoulder the photograph of a young girl. It can obliterate a wall and leave a tulle curtain untouched. In short, it creates unusual things. The poet’s strikes are no more premeditated than lightning.

A poet should be recognizable not by his style but by the way in which he looks at things.

At first a poet is not read at all. Then he is read badly. Then he becomes a classic, and habit prevents him from being read. Eventually, he retains his few early lovers for eternity.

A poet must not refuse honours, but he must see to it that no one thinks of offering them to him. If they are offered to him, it is because he has done something wrong. He must then accept the honours he is offered as a punishment.
[…]
This is what Erik Satie meant when he said, “It is not enough to refuse The Legion of Honour; you have not to deserve it.

All beautiful writing is automatic.

A poet’s laziness, waiting for voices: a dangerous attitude. It means that he isn’t doing what he needs in order to make the voices speak to him.

I used to use a detective agency’s advertisement to describe the figure of the poet: “Sees everything, hears everything, nobody suspects a thing.”

A poet never has enough freedom. Everything that he hoards turns against him. He is fortunate if somebody plunders him, dupes him, abandons him, ransacks his house, and drives him out of his home.

The poet has a truth of his own that people mistake for a lie. The poet is a lie that tells the truth.

The poet uses ornamentation to win people over and to seduce his readers. One day the ornamentation will fall away.

A poem always unravels too quickly. You have to tie and retie it firmly.

Seriousness that imposes: Never believe it. Never confuse it with gravity.

The canvas hates to be painted. The colours hate serving the painter, the paper hates the poem, and the ink hates us. What remains of these struggles is a battlefield, a famous date, a hero’s testimony.

Éluard’s clear water reflected the nature of his soul and so lovingly deformed it. Those who imitate him can only reflect a reflection.

Poetry is ill-served by people who live with their feet on the ground while wanting to look like dreamers. Poetry walks with one foot in life and one foot in death. That’s why I call it lame, and it is by its lameness that I recognize it.

I have noticed that one must write countless pages before a single word strikes a chord with a reader, or a single detail is remembered. The truth is that people will pass judgement on our house on as slight a basis as the catch on the door. This observation give me a sense of vertigo that makes me lazy.

Why do these thoughts come to me, to someone who is so reluctant to write? It’s probably because—having broken down in a street in Orléans—I am writing them on the move, in a third-class carriage that keeps jogging me. I reconnect with this dear work [of writing] on the endpapers of books, on the backs of envelopes, on tablecloths: a marvellous discomfort that stimulates the mind.*

—Jean Cocteau, selections from Secrets of Beauty (Eris, 2024; based on Éditions Gallimard, 2013), translated by Juliet Powys, with an introduction by Pierre Caizergues.

*The introduction states that this book of thoughts was composed in March 1945 on a journey back to Paris from the town of Anjouin. The car in which Cocteau was traveling broke down and was towed into Orléans, where he then took a train to Paris.

higher order

The audience for poetry is more advanced than the audiences of other arts, because more is required of those who follow poetry.

they who believe

Heartened that there were people who believed more in her poetry than she did.

for you and your mom

Print litmags typically give you two contributor copies, because they know you’ll want to keep a copy and that your mom will want to read your work too.

the many and the few

Many read the long demanding poem in part, few could aver to having read all.

faith-based readership

For a poet any readership one might imagine is like a belief in God, it has to be taken on faith alone.

less of the same

You have written and published a dozen books and you are almost unknown among fellow poets, not to mention any greater audience. Is it not time to slow down, to re-set, and to see if you can find a strain of poetry that will be recognized?

not numbers that count

Among poets, one’s popularity runs inverse to one’s respect among one’s peers.