Marge Piercy Quotes

For a poet, making poems is a way of viewing the world, being in the world, breathing.

My best times are midnight to six actually. I'll leaf through my notebooks and if something catches my eye and I feel like I want to transfer it from the notebook to the page, I do, and then comes this very strange process which is difficult to describe in that I'll write until I get stuck or I can't go any further or I'm boring myself or whatever and then I might go to another poem.

The subject of the poem usually dictates the rhythm or the rhyme and its form. Sometimes, when you finish the poem and you think the poem is finished, the poem says, "You're not finished with me yet," and you have to go back and revise, and you may have another poem altogether. It has its own life to live.

I've found that writing novels is an all-absorbing experience - both physical and mental - and I have to do it every day in order to keep the rhythm, to keep myself focused on what I'm doing.

The question "From where does the poet get it?" addresses only the what, nobody learns anything about the how when asking that question.

In dance, in composition, in sculpture, the experience is the same: we are more the conduit than the creator of what we express.

I love creating. I am addicted to the drug of creation and creating things. I get a little depressed when I am struggling to find what I know is locked inside. If it's a lyric or something that is challenging me, I can be very depressed, but when it's like heaven opens up and it gives you a song, it's amazing. There's nothing else that I enjoy more probably.

When I'm writing, I write. And then it's as if the muse is convinced that I'm serious and says, 'Okay. Okay. I'll come.'

When I'm in the studio, when I'm warm, when I'm what people call improvising, I feel a very special connection. I feel the most right. I don't want to become too mystic about this, but things feel as though they're in the best order at that particular moment.

I usually have an idea that I want to build on and let the music take me where I wanna go.

There is something else to be said about this immediate, spontaneous way of working, and that is this: in such moments, one is playing at the game of creation.

Some people, it [songwriting] comes faster. Some people, it comes slower.

Show up, show up, show up, and after a while the muse shows up, too. If she doesn’t show up invited, eventually she just shows up

When I'm recording, which is synonymous with writing, I'll play things over and over again until it sounds like I've got the right guitar part. Whereas I think, as the much younger player I tended to do things much more consciously. I didn't wait for the moment where inspiration might strike. That's what I do now. I wait for it to naturally start to replay itself in my mind. As I say, I don't force it. So I like to think of myself as a receiver. I'm a telephone line to who knows where, but until I hear it through that receiver, I don't usually do it. It's got to start writing itself somehow.

The artistic impulse seems not to wish to produce finished work. It certainly deserts us half-way, after the idea is born; and if we go on, it is labor.

It's normally in the morning, just playing around. And I'm not saying everything I make is great, but that's what I do. I can't even remember how I wrote stuff.

Inspiration does not always precede the act of writing; it often follows it.

Every time I hear sounds, I see pictures. Then, I start getting ideas. It just drives me crazy

I never 'plan' a stanza. Words cluster like chromosomes, determining the procedure.

No poem is worth anything unless it starts from a poetic trance, out of which you can be wakened by interruption as from a dream. In fact, it is the same thing.

I wake up in the morning, or the middle of the night when an idea comes through. My songwriting style, basically I just write down information given to me from the muse and how that works for songwriters. Record the muse and the muse delivers.

I was working on a piece for one of the things I was dancing to and I needed to have original music. I didn't know where to begin, I'm so bad at computers, and I remembered that he actually made music. I asked Astro Raw if he'd be interested in scoring and he said yes.

I don't really know why an idea comes to me. But all of a sudden, an idea comes and from experience I can intuit what something means when an interesting line pops up. Or I can intuit what an interesting choice might be. And I can try a couple of different choices, and see which one feels right, and then continue the song to see where it goes.

Writing for me always requires trickery. Tricking myself into sitting down, letting words tumble out until you find the good ones. It's sort of a trance. And when a piece is done, I have little memory of how I wrote it, and zero confidence I'd ever be able to do it again.

I'm trying to make something every time that feels new and surprises people. Hopefully at least one person. But it's not like I turn it off. I don't make a movie and then go back to my normal life. When I'm finishing one movie the next day I'm thinking about the next one.