Helen Vendler Quotes

I have tried for much of my life to write as if I was composing my sentences to be read posthumously.

I would like to be proud of having written some poems that will be remembered, but I will never know whether I will have any reason to be proud of that.

Francis Webb is easily our greatest poet and one of the greatest poets in the world but he's hardly ever mentioned.

When Robert Frost was alive, I was known as the other new England poet, which is to be barely known at all.

In the world of British poetry, Carol Ann Duffy is a superstar.

Stand still, true poet that you are! I know you; let me try and draw you. Some night you'll fail us: when afar You rise, remember one man saw you, Knew you, and named a star!

I'm glad 'Honest' came out right after 'Karate Chop,' because I don't want to be seen as a one-hit wonder.

I'm all about leaving a legacy behind and trying to cement myself as one of the greats. I don't just want to be remembered as the guy who beat Michael Phelps at the 2012 London Olympics - a one-hit wonder - I want to be an inspiration to the kids.

I didn't want to be one of these superstars that just come and then just disappear.

Even famous poets such as Marianne Moore and William Carlos Williams were rarely asked to read their poems.

I want to take care of my family for generations. I want to have my head turned into a bust in the Hall of Fame.

I liked Hemingway better before I began to be called 'Hemingwayesque.'

The first thing you see in my hallway is a large 18th-century bust of Milton, who stares at me as I watch TV and reminds me of the grave and committed role of the poet. Although he was blind, Milton had one of the most unswerving gazes of all English poets.

If there's one thing I've written that could survive into posterity, I'd want that to be the poetry.

I don't want to be part of films that are easily forgotten.

I don't want to be the next hottest thing, I want longevity.

In Britain, we have this attitude that people are one-hit wonders. If it proves that way, I'd rather have had that one hit than not at all.

There are heroes and then there are legends, heroes get remembered but legends never die.

I could bear being in the charts and being on everyone's car radio 10 times a day. I'm just terrified of... a lot of people I respect have done it with a real little 'ditty' and that was the end of it - that was all they were ever known for.

For a long time, we got no respect. People thought we just got lucky. They said we were a one-record wonder.

The 'Playboy' affiliation will probably stick for the rest of my life to some extent.

Writers want to be reread. They want to think that their words don't just flash by but deserve some reflection.

I want to be somebody, a person, first that people remember, but also, I want music that I release to still be around. I don't want it to just be cool for a second and be gone.

A few of Ellison's short stories from the 1940s and 1950s were widely anthologized over the years. After a while, it became generally known that he was at work on another novel. Though he remained aware ever afterward of the authority 'Invisible Man' gave to him, no second novel followed his brilliant debut in 1952.

I have many influences and poets whose work I love. My personal canon includes Blake, Keats, Dickinson, Baudelaire, Stevens, Duncan and Barbara Guest - and many living poets as well.