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" Language is remarkable, except under the extreme constraints of mathematics and logic, it never can talk only about what it's supposed to talk about but is always spreading around. "
Howard Nemerov
Mathematics
Language
Logic
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" I am not at all clear what free verse is anymore. That's one of the things you learn not to know. "
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" I liked the kid who wrote me that he had to do a term paper on a modern poet and he was doing me because, though they say you have to read poems twice, he found he could handle mine in one try. "
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" The nice thing about the Bible is it doesn't give you too many facts. Two an a half lines and it tells you the whole story and that leaves you a great deal of freedom to elaborate on how it might have happened. "
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" I sometimes talk about the making of a poem within the poem. "
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" A lot happens by accident in poetry. "
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" I think there was a revolution in poetry, associated chiefly with Eliot and Pound; but maybe it is of the nature of revolutions or of the nature of history that their innovations should later come to look trivial or indistinguishable from technical tricks. "
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" Occasionally a student writer comes up with something really beautiful and moving, and you won't know for years if it was an accident or the first burst of something wonderful. "
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" Obvious enough that generalities work to protect the mind from the great outdoors; is it possible that this was in fact their first purpose? "
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" Language cares. "
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" I have a plot, but not much happens. "
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" Nothing in the universe can travel at the speed of light, they say, forgetful of the shadow's speed. "
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" The spirit world doesn't admit to communicating with me, so it's fairly even. "
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" When you write it doesn't occur to you that somebody could think different from what you do. "
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" I've thought of the last line of some poems for years and tried them out, It wouldn't work because the last line was much too beautiful for the poem. "
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" The secrets of success are a good wife and a steady job. My wife told me. "
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" We're not in love with Literature all the time - especially when you have to teach it every day. "
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" I like all my children, even the squat and ugly ones. "
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" Shakespeare tells the same stories over and over in so many guises that it takes a long time before you notice. "
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" I think there's one thing which distinguishes our art - we don't consider. We don't think. We write a little verse because it comes to us. "
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" I would talk in iambic pentameter if it were easier. "
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" When modern writers gave up telling stories, they gave up the greatest thing we had. "
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" When I was starting to write, the great influence was T.S. Eliot and after that William Butler Yeats. "
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" Robert Frost had always said you mustn't think of the last line first, or it's only a fake poem, not a real one. I'm inclined to agree. "
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" The historian is terribly responsible to what he can discern are the facts of the case, but he's nothing if he doesn't make out a case. "
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" Write what you know. That should leave you with a lot of free time. "
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