“I don’t think it’s a responsibility, but I certainly think it’s something poetry can do, and I think that poetry has a unique ability to do it because of its self-referential nature and its self-conscious nature. And I mean that in the sense that, in prose, we’re not often as conscious of the language and the operation of language itself. Our focus in on the content, on what is denotatively produced. In poetry we are trained, or at least readers of poetry are trained, to attend to or account for the structures of language as well as what that language conveys.”

On if the poet has a responsibility in “‘The language is constructing our ideas more than we are deploying the language’: An interview with Gregory Pardlo” http://gulfcoastmag.org/reviews-and-interviews/art-and-reviews/an-interview-with-gregory-pardlo/ in Gulf Coast Magazine (2019 Jul 17)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "I don’t think it’s a responsibility, but I certainly think it’s something poetry can do, and I think that poetry has a …" by Gregory Pardlo?
Gregory Pardlo photo
Gregory Pardlo 3
American writer 1968

Related quotes

Gertrude Stein photo
Jane Roberts photo

“Who needs poetry? All of us do. Poetry has always been the voice of the inner self, the carrier of revelations, dreams, and visions that often defy expression in ordinary prose.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: Dialogues of the Soul and Mortal Self in Time (1975), p. v

“Poetry has always been at the margins, and I think that because of its sidelining, this has been a part of its appeal…”

On poetry in “Interview | Raymond Antrobus” https://www.thelondonmagazine.org/interview-poet-raymond-antrobus/ in the London Magazine (2019 Feb 20)

Terrance Hayes photo

“…I think that poets can do anything. With a novel, we all know about plot and character and yes, there’s experimental and people can recognize that, but I think that there are rules. I don’t think of poetry that way…”

Terrance Hayes (1971) American poet

On poets having certain freedoms in “Interview with Terrance Hayes” http://katonahpoetry.com/interviews/interview-terrance-hayes/ in the Katonah Poetry Series (2017 Sep 21)

John Keats photo
Audre Lorde photo

“Prose uses the medium of language whilst poetry serves language and explores it.”

Michael Schmidt (poet) (1947) American poet

The Great Modern Poets, London, 2006

Daljit Nagra photo
Eli Siegel photo

Related topics