Quotes by Robert Pinsky

“A sentence is like a tune. A memorable sentence gives its emotion a melodic shape. You want to hear it again, say itin a way, to hum it to yourself. You desire, if only in the sound studio of your ...”

“From an essay on early reading by Robert Pinsky:My favorite reading for many years was the "Alice" books. The sentences had the same somber, drugged conviction as Sir John Tenniel's illustrations, ...”

“This is one of the great human mysteries: why do works of art about bad things such as loss and deprivation make us feel good?”

“I delight sometimes in saying to - as when I'm a teacher, I love saying, 'This is really important, so don't write it down.' To me, what you retain is a very important filter.”

“I think art is not an ornament or refinement at the fringes of human intelligence, I think it's at the center. It's at the core.”

“The last thing a young artist should do in poetry or any other field is think about what's in style, what's current, what are the trends. Think instead of what you like to read, what do you admire,...”

“For an American, there's no automatic place where people love the art of poetry. There's not a social class that considers poetry its property the way in some countries there's a snob value to the ...”

“Jazz and poetry both involve a structure that may be familiar and to some extent predictable. And then, you try to create as much surprise and spontaneity and feeling and variation while respecting...”

“I think my first experience of art, or the joy in making art, was playing the horn at some high-school dance or bar mitzvah or wedding, looking at a roomful of people moving their bodies around in ...”

“There are no rules. However, principles may be discerned in actual practice; for example, in the way people actually speak, or in the lines the poets have written.”

“No aspect of a poem is more singular, more unique, than its rhythm.”

“I am very interested in memorization which is the process of incorporating a poem, so, I would say the kind of poetry I write is the kind that emphasises the physical qualities of the words.”

“I think what holds a poem like this together for me, if it’s held together, is largely meter; this one is in iambic pentameter and iambic pentameter whatever else it is, can be a very good glue. It...”

“Poetry is the most bodliy of arts, the medium of poetry is the column of breath rising from the diaphragm in the individual's chest to be shaped into meaning sounds inside the mouth of whoever unde...”

“All the mysteries of consciousness flower in the body.”

“Poetry is a vocal art for me, not neccessarilyperformative, it might be reading to one self or recalling some lines by memory.The speaker bringing their own experience to it,changing it with their ...”

“That physical tingle, that powerful audible experience(not with poets projecting their work to an audience) but more intimate, less planned than that.”

“Craft is something you learn by studying models.When a student asks, what is a good book about traditional iambic verse, The Collected Poems of Ben Jonson. What is an excellent book about free vers...”

“It is the nature of poetry to emphasize that the physical sounds of words come from a particular body , one at a time, in a particular order.”

“An artist needs not so much an audience, as to feel a need to answer, a promise to respond....a good feeling about his art.”