Erica Jong Quotes

I feel often very close to the ecstasy and anguish which lie at the very heart of poetry - I am writing a lot.

Writing a poem ... is a kind of possible love affair between something like the heart (that courageous but also shy factory of emotion) and the learned skills of the conscious mind.

I think the great artists (..) have always thought with the heart.

A vein of poetry exists in the hearts of all men.

I am an artist, you understand? For me, a picture is like poetry. When you make art, this is not coming from an intellectual place. It's coming from the deep side of your unconscious, your soul.

How can any one paint who cannot grade colors? How can any one write poetry who has not learnt to hear and see?

A poet's work consists less in seeking words for his ideas than in seeking ideas for his words and predominant rhythms.

A good poet's made as well as born.

A poet can't afford to be aloof. The tools of his trade are the people he bumps up against.

I lisp'd in numbers, for the numbers came.

Maybe you're a singer or not, but what taps into the soul leads to the heart, and that's really what I came away with, with the starting point for the record being that I could speak as a human being and feel things very deeply.

One day while studying a Yeats poem I decided to write poetry the rest of my life. I recognized that a single short poem has room for history, music, psychology, religious thought, mood, occult speculation, character, and events of one's own life. I still feel surprised that such various substances can find shelter and nourishment in a poem. A poem in fact may be a sort of nourishing liquid, such as one uses to keep an amoeba alive. If prepared right, a poem can keep an image or a thought or insights on history or the psyche alive for years, as well as our desires and airy impulses.

Poetry is the work of the bard and of the people who inspire him.

But this I know; the writer who possesses the creative gift owns something of which he is not always master--something that at times strangely wills and works for itself. He may lay down rules and devise principles, and to rules and principles it will perhaps for years lie in subjection; and then, haply without any warning of revolt, there comes a time when it will no longer consent.

There is something wonderful about singing and writing music, I think there is something special about creativity and the ability humans have in that area.

Of all the arts poetry (which owes its origin almost entirely to genius and will least be guided by precept or example) maintains the first rank.

There can be little question that good composition is far less dependent upon acquaintance with its laws, than upon practice and natural aptitude. A clear head, a quick imagination, and a sensitive ear, will go far towards making all rhetorical precepts needless.

I stay away from the writing part because I think that if it sticks, it sticks. You just know it. The stuff that doesn't stick, goes away. The stuff that propels you forward, you can see it in your partner's eyes.

Modern conquerors can kill, but do not seem to be able to create. Artists know how to create but cannot really kill. Murderers are only very exceptionally found among artists.

I think people face that in any artistic field, this idea of: oh, I could do that, if I had the time.

I think my poems immediately come out of the sensuous and emotional experiences I have, but I must say I cannot sympathise with these cries from the heart that are informed by nothing except a needle or a knife, or whatever it is.

The true poem is the poet's mind.

Poems reach up like spindrift and the edge of driftwood along the beach, wanting! They derive from a slow and powerful root that we can’t see. Stop the words now. Open the window in the center of your chest, and let the spirits fly in and out.

The poems ... are moments when I had the intensity to see, and the energy to build, some careful analog that completed the seeing. ... All I have been left is the exhausting habit of trying to tack up the slack in my life with words.