Sharon Olds Quotes

I intended an Ode, And it turned to a Sonnet.

Sonnet is about movement in a form.

You know, I can imagine not writing a novel and writing poetry only.

Actually, I'm working on a book of poetry.

One discards rhyme, not because one is incapable of rhyming neat, fleet, sweet, meet, treat, eat, feet but because there are certain emotions or energies which are nor represented by the over-familiar devices or patterns.

It is fatal to decide, intellectually, what good poetry is because you are then in honour bound to try to write it, instead of the poems that only you can write.

In verse one can take any damn constant one likes, one can alliterate, or assone, or rhyme, or quant, or smack, only one MUST leave the other elements irregular.

But I can only write what the muse allows me to write. I cannot choose, I can only do what I am given, and I feel pleased when I feel close to concrete poetry - still.

I am not at all clear what free verse is anymore. That's one of the things you learn not to know.

I aspire to a poetry of great formal integrity, deep passion and high intellect, and I have many models for how to do that.

All literature is an effort at the formal character of the epigram.

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

In the world of poetry there are would-be poets, workshop poets, promising poets, lovesick poets, university poets, and a few real poets.

A poet's cultural baggage and erudition can interfere with a poem.

In Australia, not reading poetry is the national pastime.

I feel that I'm a poet first. Not only was poetry the first genre in which I wrote, it's the genre that serves as the basis for my practice as a writer.

I cannot belong to a nonprofit organization because when you receive grants, you have to make such great compromises with your artistic plans.

If a poem is not memorable, there's probably something wrong. One of the problems of free verse is that much of the free verse poetry is not memorable.

I'm not a journalist; I'm a poet.

I never set out to make a movie that was everything to everybody; if that were the case, we could all just take a picture of a tree and agree that the tree is beautiful and move on with our lives. I wouldn't even need to show up.

I've always thought my poems told stories.

The studio is spending great amounts of money, and they want some insurance they will get money back. They go for the middle of the road, broad in appeal. It's restrictive. It's a constant struggle, but if you give in, you're just making cottage cheese, and that's the end of it.

When poetry separates from song, then the words have to carry all the rhythm themselves; they have to do all the work. They can't rely on the singing voice.

Well, if this is poetry, I'm certainly never going to write any myself.

But the gravest difficulty, and perhaps the most important, in poetry meant solely for recitation, is the difficulty of achieving verbal beauty, or rather of making verbal beauty tell.