“Some things you know all your life. They are so simple and true they must be said without elegance, meter and rhyme… they must be naked and alone, they must stand for themselves.”
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Philip Levine 4
Poet 1928–2015Related quotes

What Are Masterpieces and Why Are There So Few of Them (1936), Afterword of a later edition
“Man, you must sweat
And rhyme your guts taut, if you'd build
Your verse a ladder.”
"Poetry For Supper"
Poetry For Supper (1958)
Context: Natural, hell! What was it Chaucer
Said once about the long toil
that goes like blood to the poems making? Leave it to nature and the verse sprawls,
Limp as bindweed, if it break at all
Life's iron crust
Man, you must sweat
And rhyme your guts taut, if you'd build
Your verse a ladder.

“Even the president of the United States
Sometimes must have to stand naked”
Song lyrics, Bringing It All Back Home (1965), It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)
Source: Lady of Mazes (2005), Chapter 16 (p. 179).