To approach a poem as if it is a puzzle to be understood is to miss the point.
A work of art is a world in itself reflecting senses and emotions of the artist's world.
Poetry is adolescence fermented, and thus preserved.
I think it's good not to make demands on the reader too early. But as the poem goes on, I want the journey of the poem to lead into some interesting places.
I picked up 'The Hunger Games' thinking it was written at my regressed reading level. I've spent hours reading it, and I'm not even halfway through. Our bass player, whose name is also Nate, ended up reading all three novels and loved them.
I have been enlightened. I have fallen into poetry and it has swallowed me up.
William Trevor is an author I admire; his stories are subtle and powerful, and beautifully written.
It's impossible to have a favourite Shakespeare, since so many of the plays rouse and inspire completely different parts of your being.
The novel avoids the sublime and seeks out the interesting.
Film is a medium of clear lines and broad strikes - which can be fantastic - but compared to the subtleties and nuances of a novel, it doesn't even get close.
Each memorable verse of a true poet has two or three times the written content.
The thing about great poetry is we have no defenses against it.
The young people have MTV and rock and roll. Why would they go to read poetry? Poetry belongs to the Stone Age. It awakens in us perceptions that go back to those times.
In the hands of a great poet, words have ways of affecting us in ways we don't understand.
I was enamored with Charles Dickens as a kid, and his names blew me away.
Poetry is meant to inspire readers and listeners, to connect them more deeply to themselves even as it links them more fully to others. But many people feel put off by the terms of poetry, its odd vocabulary, its notorious difficulty.
I've always taken the view that works of art are not just things that we enjoy. They can convey truths about the world more vividly and to greater effect than ordinary philosophical prose can because they don't just deal in ideas but show the emotional reality of them.
I think all art - if it's good - is a result of really trying to create something that you can't put into words. Where language ends is where good art begins.
To David Lynch, any film or television show should be life casting a shadow.
Sometimes the theme of the film is something that comes down to the way you designed the film - that you're saying something about the world. And it's one of the things that I think animation can do, in a way that other forms of filmmaking can't do. Because every single thing you see has got to be designed and created.
Strictly speaking, the idea of a scientific poem is probably as nonsensical as that of a poetic science.
I think you can get a sort of intensity and an edginess offering nine stories in a book. Competing versions of things.
The most powerful part of the art is experiential, yet it's the hardest to describe because it's nonverbal.
When poetry is on the money, 12 words can slay you. I admire that greatly.
One who writes a poem writes it because the language prompts, or simply dictates, the next line.
