“The moment of change is the only poem.”

— Adrienne Rich

Last update Nov. 2, 2021. History

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Adrienne Rich 51

American poet, essayist and feminist 1929–2012

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“What happens at the beginning of your poem has to—because it’s a poem—be transformed by the end of your poem. So if the triggering moment for the beginning of your poem is a known political moment, I am fine with that, that’s great. But as I’m reading, I expect it to change because that was just the trigger…”

Jericho Brown (1976) American writer

On how poems might be structured around a political theme in “JERICHO BROWN in conversation with MICHAEL DUMANIS” http://www.benningtonreview.org/jericho-brown-interview in Bennington Review (2018 Oct 27)

“I revise short poems sometimes for years, whereas, since there is no getting lost in the long poem, I engage whatever comes up in the moment and link it with its moment.”

A.R. Ammons (1926–2001) American poet

Paris Review interview (1996)
Context: In the long poem, if there is a single governing image at the center, then anything can fit around it, meanwhile allowing for a lot of fragmentation and discontinuity on the periphery. Short poems, for me, are coherences, single instances on the periphery of a nonspecified center. I revise short poems sometimes for years, whereas, since there is no getting lost in the long poem, I engage whatever comes up in the moment and link it with its moment.

“It is absurd to think that the only way to tell if a poem is lasting is to wait and see if it lasts. The right reader of a good poem can tell the moment it strikes him that he has taken an immortal wound—that he will never get over it.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

General sources
Source: "The Poetry of Amy Lowell" in The Christian Science Monitor (16 May 1925)

“A short poem is often called a lyric, which originally meant a poem short enough to be set to music and sung for a moment's pleasure.”

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“The rhythm of a poem ceases the moment the feeling loses its intensity.”

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“The poem refreshes life so that we share,
For a moment, the first idea”

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Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942), It Must Be Abstract
Context: p>The poem refreshes life so that we share,
For a moment, the first idea... It satisfies
Belief in an immaculate beginningAnd sends us, winged by an unconscious will,
To an immaculate end.</p