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" I find in my poetry and prose the rhythms and imagery of the best - I mean, when I'm at my best - of the good Southern black preachers. The lyricism of the spirituals and the directness of gospel songs and the mystery of blues are in my music or in my poetry and prose, or I missed everything. "

Maya Angelou

Blues

Poetry

Music

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" A poet can survive everything but a misprint. "

" My exposure to Beckett and to late O'Neill was probably important right at the time I gave up poetry and the novel. "

" The actual world, not some fantastic structure that has nothing to do with reality, must provide the material for modern poetry. "

" You have to be careful about over-politicizing the utterances of people of colour because, oftentimes, there's poetry that seeks to go beyond that narrative. "

" Achievement brings its own anticlimax. "

" History shows us that in times of people feeling like they are in need of some sort of rebellion or protests, the artists rise because the poetry we create about pain and its relationship to culture in the world begins to soothe and heal people who are feeling confused or afraid. "

" I'm not really a musician. I'm a performer, and I love rock n' roll. I've embraced rock n' roll because it encompasses all the things I'm interested in: poetry, revolution, sexuality, political activism - all of these things can be found in rock n' roll. "

" In poetry you can express almost inexpressible feelings. You can express the pain of loss, you can express love. People always turn to poetry when someone they love dies, when they fall in love. "

" As I grew older - collapsing into my seventies, glimpsing ahead the cliffs of the eighties, colliding into eighty-five - poetry abandoned me. "

Donald Hall

Seventies

Ahead

" Art: If the object of poetry is, to make men, then poetry is the heir of prophecy. "

" At one time in my life, from the time I was seven until I was about 13, I didn't speak. I only spoke to my brother. The reason I didn't speak: I had been molested, and I told the name of the molester to my brother who told it to the family. "

" Great poetry is always written by somebody straining to go beyond what he can do. "

Stephen Spender

Beyond

Great

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

" It is time to get drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of Time, get drunk; get drunk without stopping! On wine, on poetry, or on virtue, as you wish. "

" My great hope is to laugh as much as I cry; to get my work done and try to love somebody and have the courage to accept the love in return. "

" If you read quickly to get through a poem to what it means, you have missed the body of the poem. "

" Everyone needs solitude, especially a person who is used to thinking about what she experiences. Solitude is very important in my work as a mode of inspiration, but isolation is not good in this respect. I am not writing poetry about isolation. "

" I don't think I've ever read poetry, ever. I'm not really book-smart. "

" I've always written. There's a journal which I kept from about 9 years old. The man who gave it to me lived across the street from the store and kept it when my grandmother's papers were destroyed. I'd written some essays. I loved poetry, still do. But I really, really loved it then. "

" Always be a poet, even in prose. "

" As far as I knew white women were never lonely, except in books. White men adored them, Black men desired them and Black women worked for them. "

" You know, in my music career there was a moment where the irony was just so heavy. There were people in my audience that were the reason I developed neuroses. These people that tortured my life were using my art, my poetry, as fuel for them, to torture other people. "

" Plagiarism has been around far longer than the Internet. In fact, I had a poem published in 'Seventeen' magazine when I was 15 years old. About a year later I was informed that there was a girl who used that same poem to win a statewide poetry competition in Alabama. It took months for people to put together that this had happened. "

" The sense of flowing, which is so crucial to song, is also crucial to poetry. "

" Poetry is at least an elegance and at most a revelation. "

" I want to promote poetry to the point where you got all the baldhead kids running around doing poetry, getting the music out of the way and having only words, the spoken word, and then see what happens. "

" Everything one invents is true, you may be perfectly sure of that. Poetry is as precise as geometry. "

" All voices are important, and yet it seems that people of color have a lot to say, particularly if you look through the poetry of young people - a lot of questions and a lot of concerns about immigration and security issues, you name it - big questions. "

" When I was in college, I really liked poetry. I don't read much anymore. "

" You don't make a poem with ideas, but with words. "