Andrew Sean Greer Quotes

I think poetry is the only domain where a writer you like can truly be said to influence you, because you read and reread a poem so many times that it simply drills itself into your head.

I'm a writer who likes to be influenced.

Well, I like to write poetry. I'm a published poet.

I sometimes talk about the making of a poem within the poem.

I think that concrete poetry seems to have, as far as I can see, come to a kind of a dead end. It doesn't seem to be going any further than it went in its high period of about five or six years ago.

I was always a huge fan of E. E. Cummings. He did a series of lectures at Harvard or Princeton, and they were recorded. And they were incredibly moving.

When I discovered the lyric poem, that advanced not by narrative steps but by blocks and layers of imagery, I said, 'Gee, I probably could do that. So let me try that.'

There are no poetic ideas; only poetic utterances.

I don't like scaring people off. When I tell people I'm a writer, they look kind of interested. Then I tell them that I write poetry, and they think I'm weird.

It puzzles me when writers say they can't read fiction when they're writing fiction because they don't want to be influenced. I'm totally open to useful influence. I'm praying for it.

When it comes to poetry, I think partly the numbers of people attempting to write poems is probably a result or the reaction to technology.

Poetry is the most concentrated form of literature; it is the most emotionalized and powerful way in which thought can be presented.

I think fiction goes to poetry for the intensity of its use of language.

However, poetry does not live solely in books or in school anthologies.

One of my favorite modern American authors is Denis Johnson. I'm deeply inspired by all of his work - I rip him off constantly.

I liked the kid who wrote me that he had to do a term paper on a modern poet and he was doing me because, though they say you have to read poems twice, he found he could handle mine in one try.

Gregory Corso used to get really pissed when people called Bob Dylan a 'poet.' After writing poetry for a few years, I can understand that.

It's the combination of the intimate and the public that I find so exciting about being poet laureate.

I don't have traceable literary models because I haven't had great literary influences in my life.

Romantic poetry had its heyday when people like Lord Byron were kicking it large. But you try and make a living as a poet today, and you'll find it's very different!

When I was in college, I really liked poetry. I don't read much anymore.

I think a poet is anybody who wouldn't call himself a poet.

And the second question, can poetry be taught? I didn't think so.

The rules or 'laws' of poetry are only tentative devices, an approximate scheme. There is no Sinaitic recipe for poetry, for the individual poem is the norm.

Well, I still write poetry, but I wouldn't call myself a poet.