Don McKay Quotes

Don McKay, CM is a Canadian poet, editor, and educator.

✵ 1942

Don McKay: 10 quotes0 likes

Famous Don McKay Quotes

“Admitting you are a nature poet, nowadays, may make you seem something of a fool!”

Baler Twine

“There's a place
between desire and memory, some back porch
we can neither wish nor recall”

'Apparatus' 1997 McClelland & Stewart Nov 2014
Other quotes

“Phenomenology is one name for the path back from the object to the thing, the counterbalance to the objectification or 'progress'. Poetry is another.”

'Paradoxides' 2012
Other quotes

“We inflict our rage for immortality on things, marooning them on static islands.”

Baler Twine

“The nature poet may (should in fact ), resort to the field guide or library but will keep coming back, figuratively speaking, to the trail - to the grain of experience.”

Baler Twine

“Before the wonderful, terrible wrestling with words and music there is the state of mind I'm calling 'poetic attention' … a sort of readiness … a form of knowing.”

Baler Twine

Don McKay Quotes

“The medatative approach acknowledges that one moment will inevitably lead on to the next. We accept immortality instead of fighting it off.”

'The Appropriate Gesture' interview with Ken Babstock Dec 2001.
Other quotes

“The first indication of one's status as a nature poet is that one does not invoke language right off when talking about poetry.”

Baler Twine

“Poets are supremely interested in what language can't do, in order to gesture outside, they use language in a way that flirts with its destruction.”

Baler Twine

“As I grew older the poetic surround becomes more important. I realize that the 'poetic attention' was more important to me than poetry was. The 'poetic attention' being a kind of longing without the desire to posess.”

Other quotes

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