Denise Duhamel Quotes

I am interested in the confines of the page and busting through/off the page as well. A writer must let go of the line when writing prose poems, which brings its own pleasures.

I believe it's impossible to write good poetry without reading. Reading poetry goes straight to my psyche and makes me want to write. I meet the muse in the poems of others and invite her to my poems. I see over and over again, in different ways, what is possible, how the perimeters of poetry are expanding and making way for new forms.

The "truth" is the poem itself. Just because someone writes a poem about a feeling she has does not mean that the feeling will stay forever. The truth of the emotion of the poem remains, even if the particular truth of the poet changes.

I love going to movie theaters, even in the era of movies on-demand and Netflix. When you are in a movie theater, no one can reach you by phone or other means.

Unlike Woody Allen, I would be happy to be part of any (poetry) club that would have me.

Visual media is the dominant art form in our present day culture, whereas poetry is, at best, a proxy. Yet poetry and film are both "dream factories."

Writing is performative - and while, yes, the words in essence will be there "forever," poems are often about ecstatic moments rather than trying to pin down a particular truth of an event.

As a teenager, I loved acting, painting, photography, and making films with my friend's Super 8 camera. But I always loved writing the best. I chose writing even before I knew poetry was available to me.

My advice to my younger self would have been, "Chill. Concentrate on the poems. Everything else will work itself out."

The spoken word community was significant in making me want to write accessible and urgent poems. Bob Holman, in particular, was an impressive figure.

The "biggest" poems I ever made are based on the psychological principal of the "Johari Window:" what the self freely shares with others; what the self hides from others; what others hide from the self; and what is unknown to the self and others.

While poetry was less professionalized than it is now, I still had this urge to win prizes and see my work in magazines, to get an "A," as though poetry could be graded. I wish I had been more patient and less frantic about getting published.

I know writers for whom the act of writing is a necessary chore. They suffer to write great work. I am very lucky that for me writing is a delight.

I don't know if there are topics that I unconsciously avoid, but as soon as they pop up in my writing, I try to take on those topics, whether or not I publish the poems.

I started wanting desperately to say something, to make a point, to be heard - and I still feel that way. Free verse served me best when I embarked on poetry.

Jean Valentine and Jane Cooper were my professors at Sarah Lawrence College - and they were uncompromised in their art. They gave me models of how to live one's life as a poet.

I am open to squeezing in whatever I can in this wonderful life. Instead of asking, "Is that all there is?" I seem, lately, to be always saying, "Wow!"

What has stayed true in my life as a writer is my dedication to writing - I try to write every day, no matter what - and the joy that writing has given me.

In almost every book I've written, there is a reference to a movie - legendary films, actors and actresses, and forgotten made-for-TV movies. The leaps poems make are not unlike the cuts in a film. The miniature and avant-garde prose poets have perhaps the most obvious ties to film, as a prose poem in its shape is not unlike a movie screen.

I also could see myself as a stand-up comedian, a fashion designer (for people of all sizes), a hairdresser, an earnest and eventually burnt-out politician, or the owner of a small bistro. But I fear that, without poetry, I would have simply been going through the motions.

Not that a poem can "hurt" someone the same way a physical blow can or even a mean remark can ... I just felt unsure that my tone would be taken the right way and/or unsure of my own writing, that I couldn't maintain the tone I wanted.