Jack Kerouac Quotes

It is true that short forms of poetry have been cultivated in the Far East more than in modern Europe; but in all European literature short forms of poetry are to be found - indeed quite as short as anything in Japanese.

After you kind of find your footing, sonnets are what comes easiest.

I'm a lousy writer, and it shows when I try to write poetry.

There are people who think it's easier to write books in verse, and it's definitely not.

I write... sonnets... and writing sonnets is boring. You have to find rhymes; you have to write hendecasyllables; so after a while, I get bored and my drawer is overflowing with unfinished short poems.

In poetry, you must love the words, the ideas and the images and rhythms with all your capacity to love anything at all.

The form I most enjoy writing is the sonnet or sonnet-like forms, where you have a - you know, three stanzas or two stanzas that lead into a concluding couplet.

I began to write poetry in high school, and would ride miles over sandy roads in the fine hills around Cedar Rapids, repeating the lines over and over until I had them right, making some of the rhythm of the horse help.

I started writing poetry in high school because I wanted desperately to write, but somehow, writing stories didn't appeal to me, and I loved the flow and the feel and sense of poetry, especially that of what one might call formal verse.

I have piles of poetry books in the bathroom, on the stairs, everywhere. The only way to write poetry is to read it.

Poetry was one of the things that interested me most as I was growing up. I used to write it in my head all the time. I still think the very greatest pleasure in life is to write a poem.

All through childhood, I wrote verses and mysteries. There is, for me, one connection: structure. My poetry is metrical, rhyming.

I've read some of your modern free verse and wonder who set it free.

I want to write poems which are very emotional, but I would have some hesitation in saying I want to write poems which are sentimental.

Southern poets are still writing narrative poems, poems in forms, dramatic poems.

Then I discovered I loved writing poetry more than fiction.

My next project is to get back to that. Actually, to learn how to write poetry. I'm not kidding.

I like to write poetry.

Writing poetry makes you intensely conscious of how words sound, both aloud and inside the head of the reader. You learn the weight of words and how they sound to the ear.

I like the way words go together and I like the gamesmanship of writing poetry. It is such a challenge.

I always read poetry before I write, to sensitize me to the rhythms and music of language.

I love reading poetry, and yet, at this point, the thought of writing a poem, to me, is tantamount to figuring out a trigonometry question.

I don't shape trends, I'd say. I merely reflect them. I think the emphasis is on 'them.' I like variety in poetry. I love how it comes in so many guises. As rock lyric, as rap, as note on a fridge.

I really liked writing rhyming poems and plays.

It helped my lyric writing so much studying poetry. I thought I knew what poetry was before I immersed myself in it. Poetry is meditative. It's reflective.