The Paris Review interview
Context: Every poem that works is like a metaphor of the whole mind writing, the solution of all the oppositions and imbalances going on at that time. When the mind finds the balance of all those things and projects it, that’s a poem. It’s a kind of hologram of the mental condition at that moment, which then immediately changes and moves on to some other sort of balance and rearrangement. What counts is that it be a symbol of that momentary wholeness. That’s how I see it.
A.R. Ammons (1926–2001) American poet
Paris Review interview (1996)
Context: I’ve always been highly energized and have written poems in spurts. From the god-given first line right through the poem. And I don’t write two or three lines and then come back the next day and write two or three more; I write the whole poem at one sitting and then come back to it from time to time over the months or years and rework it.
“He who would write heroic poems should make his whole life a heroic poem.”
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher
Life of Schiller.
1820s, Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (1827–1855)
“Suicide is, after all, the opposite of the poem.”
Anne Sexton (1928–1974) poet from the United States
“If I wasn't writing poems, I'd be washing my hands all the time.”
Sherman Alexie (1966) Native American author and filmmaker
Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), II Linear Perspective
Context: All objects project their whole image and likeness, diffused and mingled in the whole of the atmosphere, opposite to themselves. The image of every point of the bodily surface, exists in every part of the atmosphere. All the images of the objects are in every part of the atmosphere.
Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist
"Quotes", The Educated Imagination (1963), Talk 3: Giants in Time
Carl Andre (1935) American artist
Quote from a 1962 essay by Andre; as quoted in ' Objects Are What We Aren't' https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/02/26/objects-are-what-we-arent/, by Andy Battaglia; The Parish Review, February 26, 2015
“We are all writing God's poem.”
Anne Sexton (1928–1974) poet from the United States
As quoted by Erica Jong, in "Into the lion's den" in The Guardian (26 October 2000) http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2000/oct/26/features11.g2
