Paul Engle Quotes

I never think about poetry except when I'm writing it. I mean my poetry.

The idea that a poem was a made thing stayed with me, and I decided then that I wanted to be an artist, not just a diarist. So I put myself through a kind of apprenticeship in writing poetry, and I understood even then that my practice as a poet was deeply related to my reading.

I feel like I am in the service of the poem. The poem isn't something I make. The poem is something I serve.

I think my poems immediately come out of the sensuous and emotional experiences I have.

It's absolutely crucial to maintain my life as a poet.

My intention is to write poems. That's what I've been doing most of my life.

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.

For some odd reason, the expression 'death of a poet' always sounds somewhat more concrete than 'life of a poet.'

I am still interested in the long or serial poem, but have written a few smaller things. I may start sending to journals again in a year or so... that's about it.

For me, poetry was... the fastest way to express what I was feeling, what I was going through.

I chose poetry. Actually, poetry chose me.

I love to read poetry but I haven't written anything that I'm willing to show anybody.

I still have a feeling that I haven't written the best that I can write. I think all poets must feel this: that there is constantly something new to be discovered in the language. It's like a thrilling encounter, and you can find things.

The reason a poet is a poet is to write poems, not to advertise himself as a poet.

Nobody really knows whether they are a poet. I knew I was interested from the age of 15.

Hmmm. I think a lot of people can write poems that are howls of anguish. I think I've probably written such things and then torn them up.

Usually, writing lyrics for me is like bleeding drop by drop from the forehead.

I was really drawn to spoken-word style poetry. I loved the rhythms, and for some reason, I was just drawn to this poetry as a way of expressing my feelings, because I didn't have any other outlet.

I began the way nearly everybody I ever heard of - I began writing poetry. And I find that to be quite usual with writers, their trying their hand at poetry.

I have experienced healing through other writers' poetry, but there's no way I can sit down to write in the hope a poem will have healing potential. If I do, I'll write a bad poem.

I don't look on poetry as closed works. I feel they're going on all the time in my head and I occasionally snip off a length.

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

I don't think that I ever believed that poetry would be a career. I have always thought of poems as something more private than professional... I would never introduce myself as a poet. I will always have some other thing that I am.

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.

Poems have a different music from ordinary language, and every poem has a different kind of music of necessity, and that's, in a way, the hardest thing about writing poetry is waiting for that music, and sometimes you never know if it's going to come.