John Barton Quotes

Because people are very interested in my poetry, in what I say.

I guess the two Manifesto, Communicating Vessels, Mad Love, and some of his poetry made a significant mark on me but as far as bringing a literary element into the music I see it as a much broader assimilation.

The genesis of a poem for me is usually a cluster of words. The only good metaphor I can think of is a scientific one: dipping a thread into a supersaturated solution to induce crystal formation. I don't think I solve problems in my poetry; I think I uncover the problems.

There's not a good poet I know who has not at the beck and call of his memory a vast quantity of poetry that composes his mental library.

To have great poets, there must be great audiences.

I began writing poems when I was about eight, with a heavy assist from my mother. She read me Arthur Waley's translations and Whitman and Robinson Jeffers, who have been lifelong influences on me. My father read Keats to me, and then he read more Keats while I was lying on the sofa struggling with asthma.

Theodore Roethke was a poet I was raised with so he has a lot of sentimental value for me.

But you'd have a job to find many of my poems which would seem to be very influenced by a particular person.

I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled poets to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean.

I knew what book we had to write, it was clear in my head; it was journals and poetry. So I passed on their offer. I told my agent this is our vision, and no one's done it this way.

My inspiration for writing is all the wonderful books that I read as a child and that I still read. I think that for those of us who write, when we find a wonderful book written by someone else, we don't really get jealous, we get inspired, and that's kind of the mark of what a good writer is.

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.

I love taking on other people's words. They are much more interesting to me than my own.

I find that my reading, particularly nonfiction, can inspire a poem as well as anything else.

My father read poetry to me, encouraged me to memorize poems. But the writing of it was quite a different thing.

I was 15 when I first became deeply touched by the rhythm and structure of words.

How do poems grow? They grow out of your life.

By the age of nine, I had a thorough knowledge of contemporary Polish literature as well as of foreign literature in Polish translation, and I began to write poems in honour of a lady of thirty years. Naturally, she knew nothing about them.

What I wrote all the time when I was a kid - I don't want to call it 'poetry,' because it wasn't poetry. I was not that kind of a writer. I was a rhymer. I was a fan of Dorothy Parker's, so maybe I wrote poetry to that extent, but my main focus was the humor of it, and word construction, and the slant. Your words, it's a very powerful experience.

It's a maddening thing in itself to look at an old poem of yours. To translate it is even more maddening.

That's another pompous expression that is out of fashion, to say that poetry is a gift. It sounds pompous because you say, 'Who gave you the gift, and what is this gift?' And the gift is where I am; the gift is what I have come out of, the people around me who, I think, are beautiful people.

'Dead Poets Society' was a very influential film on me and so talking about that movie with him, he just inspired me to continue writing poetry and we talked a lot about our favourite poets. My wrap present from Robin was a beautiful limited edition copy of Walt Whitman's 'Leaves of Grass' and that's a great memory for me.

I've always had an affinity for writers who have a poetry background, so I always liked Tennessee Williams.

I always turn to Frank O'Hara and David Berman's 'Actual Air,' which came out in 1999. He's a poet I haven't tired of.

Yes, I do write poetry. It's very therapeutic. I'm influenced by Pablo Neruda and Gulzar Saab. It's all very personal.