19 quotes found
Writer · American · 1948
American writer (born 1948)
“I gave my voice to poetry.”
“Poetry is a call to action, and it also is action.”
“I believe in beautiful messes…I like to splatter a lot.”
“If I can only be known as one thing, then, well, I guess it would be poet and performer and teacher.”
“Poetry can tell us about what's going on in our lives - not only our personal but our social and political lives.”
“They are standing up and they're crying…and their emotion is coming from all the emotion we're experiencing collectively.”
“Your friends, and your associates, and the people around you, and the environment that you live in, and the speakers around you - the speakers around you - and the communicators around you, are the...”
“First grade was - I spoke only Spanish, and second grade - probably a bit more English. And by the time I hit third grade, I was learning, of course, much, much more English.”
“I remember looking at James Joyce's journals. It was just amazing - it looked like ants had written on the page. So much writing on one page, every corner of the page was filled. Some of the lines ...”
“I tell my workshop students, 'I want you to think of yourselves as artists. Then, when you're writing, you're painting, you're crafting, you're making a design, you're sculpting, you're creating ch...”
“Let's detox our cluttered academic brain. That's what the poet does. People call it daydreaming, detoxing our minds and taking care of that clutter. It's being able to let in call letters from the ...”
“All voices are important, and yet it seems that people of color have a lot to say, particularly if you look through the poetry of young people - a lot of questions and a lot of concerns about immig...”
“Poetry, as odd as it is, and as hard to figure out as it is, many times, it's almost something that we're used to. It's kind of like a dream language that we had centuries ago, so that when we spea...”
“San Diego shaped me a lot. The visual landscapes, the emotional panoramas, the teachers and mentors I had from the third grade through San Diego High - it's all a big part of the poetry fountain th...”
“The banner of the project is 'Casa de Colores.' Under that banner, I'm going to invite people to do a lot of good things. Perhaps working in groups, working on poetry.”
“My mother was a washerwoman - or a woman that cleaned houses in Texas... in Plano, Texas - who always loved poetry and always loved stories.”
“Poetry, with the breath of the poet, the heart of her life, joined by millions, pushes forth with the creative forces bestowed upon us. A wall is a plaything before the positive. It will take time....”
“Beauty, suffering, power and culture are all related. We cannot tear away from reality. It is better to live with all things, then to cut ourselves off and fester in a segmented mind.”
“I think it’s one of the major responsibilities of the poet. As poets we tend to not like the word responsibility. We prefer freedom, we want to be as free as we can, but freedom and responsibility ...”
