Baker Anthologist Poetry Fiction Quotes

And then there is, of course, always, and inevitably, this spume of poetry that's just blowing out of the sulphurous flue-holes of the earth. Just masses of poetry. It's unstoppable, it's uncorkable. There's no way to make it end. ~ Nicholson Baker

Poetry, far more than fiction, reveals the soul of humanity. ~ Amy Lowell

A 21st century poet is a woman who can speak her mind and stand upright like a mountain with her convictions, but can adapt like water in an ever changing season without losing her genuine elements. ~ Roseville Nidea

Real is overrated
No way in my life is that the gist
I'd be everything I am not
If I were a fictionist ~ A.A. Patawaran

How does a person exist after their world has been torn to pieces? It must be possible. People do it all the time. After all the floods and tornadoes and wars that have hit the world with inexorable violence, people somehow scrape up their lives and begin again. ~ R.L. Martinez

Not long ago, after my last trip to Russia, I had a conversation with an American very eminent in the field of politics. I asked what he read, and he replied that he studied history, sociology, politics and law.

"How about fiction - novels, plays poetry?" I asked.

"No," he said, "I have never had time for them. There's so much else I have to read."

I said, "Sir, I have recently visited Russia for the third time and don't know how well I understand Russians; but I do know that if I only read Russian history I could not have had the access to Russian thinking I have had from reading Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Pushkin, Turgenev, Sholokhov, and Ehrenburg. History only recounts, with some inaccuracy, what they did. The fiction tells, or tries to tell, why they did it and what they felt and were like when they did it."

My friend nodded gravely. "I hadn't though of that," he said. "Yes, that might be so; I had always thought of fiction as opposed to fact."

But in considering the American past, how poor we would be in information without Huckleberry Fin, An American Tragedy, Winesburg, Ohio, Main Street, The Great Gatsby, and As I Lay Dying. ~ John Steinbeck

Everyone lives by selling something. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Shared emotions experienced by two souls,empathy on unequivocal level which Davey believed would change entire species of mankind if only secret of empathy could be telepathically shared with humanity,one soul after another, until every soul understood true meaning of love. ~ Christina Westover

Therefore I would ask you to write all kinds of books, hesitating at no subject however trivial or however vast. By hook or by crook, I hope that you will possess yourselves of money enough to travel and to idle, to contemplate the future or the past of the world, to dream over books and loiter at street corners and let the line of thought dip deep into the stream. For I am by no means confining you to fiction. If you would please me - and there are thousands like me - you would write books of travel and adventure, and research and scholarship, and history and biography, and criticism and philosophy and science. By so doing you will certainly profit the art of fiction. For books have a way of influencing each other. Fiction will be much the better for standing cheek by jowl with poetry and philosophy. ~ Virginia Woolf

Underneath the forms of fiction and poetry, you can bet your ass the ground comes from someone's actual life experience. ~ Lidia Yuknavitch

I drank the dregs of the wine to what remained of my health.
I gave the last of my fervor for what remained of my hope.
I cannot say for sure that this country is cursed,
Honey flows with the milk, and the milk might curdle.
Eli7 ~ Elizaveta Mikhailichenko

Thus it had come about that she had read far more fiction, and far more poetry, those two sanctuaries of the lonely, than most of her kind. ~ John Fowles

I'm not a 'long writer' and have never wanted to write a novel or even a novella. Poetry, like flash fiction, provides a readily accessible canvas to play with. Whether to express an emotion or share a vignette, these forms are often interchangeable. ~ Marge Simon

You, my reader, who see me close, wonder about my heartbeats and measure my words, you my close friend who know my eyes and the home of their prose, you, my only lover, who always move my life, my poetry's pace and rhyme,...
I can not disclose the shape of metaphors, nor what they bashfully display behind the robes of their naked source; but you can use the eyes of heart to feel what they are made of.
And if it's a tear or a smile I evoke, it means we are human, it means we care and we love.
It means we are both beautiful. (Soar) ~ Soar

I spend most of my time reading non-fiction of all sorts. Then poetry. Then fiction to blurb. Then fiction I want to read. ~ Jim Shepard

I'm a failed poet. Reading poetry helps me to see the world differently, and I try to infuse my prose with figurative language, which goes against the trend in fiction. ~ Jesmyn Ward

For me, movies and television are interesting because they are the dominant storytelling form of our time. My first love will always be fiction, and especially novels, but I'm a writer ... I write poetry and essays and criticism and I'd love to write a whole play, and sometimes I even write scripts. ~ Jess Walter

The lilac moon came high an altitude from mine to clasp its beauty,yet next to my bosom hide, lies she,like ten thousand silver moons illumine;and her soul's music showered words as she spoke wide. ~ Nithin Purple

Imaginatively she is of the highest importance; practically she is completely insignificant. She pervades poetry from cover to cover; she is all but absent from history. She dominates the lives of kings and conquerors in fiction; in fact she was the slave of any boy whose parents forced a ring upon her finger. Some of the most inspired words, some of the most profound thoughts in literature fall from her lips; in real life she could hardly read, could scarcely spell, and was the property of her husband. ~ Virginia Woolf

I knew that the languages which one learns there are necessary to understand the works of the ancients; and that the delicacy of fiction enlivens the mind; that famous deeds of history ennoble it and, if read with understanding, aid in maturing one's judgment; that the reading of all the great books is like conversing with the best people of earlier times; it is even studied conversation in which the authors show us only the best of their thoughts; that eloquence has incomparable powers and beauties; that poetry has enchanting delicacy and sweetness; that mathematics has very subtle processes which can serve as much to satisfy the inquiring mind as to aid all the arts and diminish man's labor; that treatises on morals contain very useful teachings and exhortations to virtue; that theology teaches us how to go to heaven; that philosophy teaches us to talk with appearance of truth about things, and to make ourselves admired by the less learned; that law, medicine, and the other sciences bring honors and wealth to those who pursue them; and finally, that it is desirable to have examined all of them, even to the most superstitious and false in order to recognize their real worth and avoid being deceived thereby ~ Rene Descartes

I have been incapable of moving, even a finger or an eye, for at least a year now. I feel relatively certain about this timeframe because I have been watching the crepe myrtle outside the window of the room I am in... ~ Jason Leclerc

If freedom is free and none need worry, then what blood drops for thee? ~ Ryan Goodrich

In all ages woman has been the source of all that is pure, unselfish, and heroic in the spirit and life of man.....poetry and fiction are based upon woman's love, and the movements of history are mainly due to the sentiments or ambitions she has inspired......there is no aspiration which any man here to-night entertains, no achievement he seeks to accomplish, no great and honorable ambition he desires to gratify, which is not directly related to either or both a mother or a wife. From the hearth-stone around which linger the recollections of our mother, from the fireside where our wife awaits us, come all the purity, all the hope, and all the courage with which we fight the battle of life. The man who is not thus inspired, who labors not so much to secure the applause of the world as the solid and more precious approval of his home, accomplishes little of good for others or of honor for himself. I close with the hope that each of us may always have near us:

'A perfect woman, nobly planned,
To warn, to comfort, and command,
And yet a spirit still, and bright
With something of an angel light. ~ Chauncey Mitchell DePew

She was born of space.

And starlight.

But she bled wrath.

And vengeance.."

[From Current Work In Progress] ~ Jenna Streety

The familiar song of a night-singing nightingale rises from somewhere in the garden. A nightingale that in this season of cold should not be in the garden, a nightingale that in a thousand verses of Iranian poetry, in the hours of darkness, for the love of a red rose and in sorrow of its separation from it, has forever sung and will forever sing. ~ Shahriar Mandanipour

I have inflammation of the imagination. ~ Lera Auerbach

Now and then I am asked as to "what books a statesman should read," and my answer is, poetry and novels - including short stories under the head of novels. I don't mean that he should read only novels and modern poetry. If he cannot also enjoy the Hebrew prophets and the Greek dramatists, he should be sorry. He ought to read interesting books on history and government, and books of science and philosophy; and really good books on these subjects are as enthralling as any fiction ever written in prose or verse. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

So the women would not forgive. Their passion remained intact, carefully guarded and nurtured by the bitter knowledge of all they had lost, of all that had been stolen from them. For generations they vilified the Yankee race so the thief would have a face, a name, a mysterious country into which he had withdrawn and from which he might venture again. They banded together into a militant freemasonry of remembering, and from that citadel held out against any suggestion that what they had suffered and lost might have been in vain. They created the Lost Cause, and consecrated that proud fiction with the blood of real men. To the Lost Cause they dedicated their own blood, their own lives, and to it they offered books, monographs, songs, acres and acres of bad poetry. They fashioned out of grief and loss an imaginary world in which every Southern church had stabled Yankee horses, every nick in Mama's furniture was made by Yankee spurs, every torn painting was the victim of Yankee sabre - a world in which paint did not stick to plaster walls because of the precious salt once hidden there; in which bloodstains could not be washed away and every other house had been a hospital. ~ Howard Bahr

Fiction is supposed to be immersive and supposed to be entertaining and narrative, so structures have to be buried a little bit. If they come foregrounded too much, it stops being fiction and starts being poetry - something more concrete and out of time. ~ Eleanor Catton

Poetry might be more about the eternal verities, the essence of the human soul, and - although it's reductive to say so - fiction has perhaps been more about the differences between the unconstrained world of the imagination and the realities you run into, day-to-day, when you're riding your donkey. ~ Chad Harbach

I published only in academic journals in philosophy until I was in my 40s, but I had been writing fiction and poetry my whole adult life - without ever once trying to publish it, and rarely letting anyone read it. ~ Cheryl Mendelson

Stephen King once wrote, "Nightmares exist outside of logic, and there's little fun to be had in explanations; they're antithetical to the poetry of fear." In a horror story, the victim keeps asking why - but there can be no explanation, and there shouldn't be one. The unanswered mystery is what stays with us the longest, and it's what we'll remember in the end. ~ Alan Wake

I am all the time thinking about poetry and fiction and you. ~ Virginia Woolf

When do things change entirely you wonder? When do they get better? When will it be possible? It is possible now. You are built to open your fists and show me your palms and to pass food from them into the hands of others. You are built for comfort and for fire, for battle and for poetry and you are a child of my family and my family was made by the world. Here we stand in the dark now and I am old and you are holding my hand and walking me from the bed to the window. We are looking out at all of it, the wonder and the danger. There are voices and the sun blazes and everything is bright enough that if I were reading the letters on your skin, I wouldn't be able to parse them. Now look at your own hand and the wrinkles in them. Those wrinkles are what happens when you clinch your fists. You were born for this resistance, for this preparation, for this life. You were born to fight. ~ Victor LaValle

Sleeping Atlantis

Silent cool waters
dancing upon her skin ~
silent cool water
ushering dreams within... ~ Muse

For most of human history, 'literature,' both fiction and poetry, has been narrated, not written - heard, not read. So fairy tales, folk tales, stories from the oral tradition, are all of them the most vital connection we have with the imaginations of the ordinary men and women whose labor created our world. ~ Angela Carter

There are no humans left. I should not be alone. I can't help but wonder that. There were so many of us living. But time started growing young four years ago. It isn't four years anymore. It's a number I wouldn't even be able to say. It feels like four years. It's trapped in my tender memory as four years. It's been an age. Multiple ages. It's been lifetimes; every single lifetime that used to exist. I remember my mother screaming. I recall the doctors naming me as nurses wiped away her blood and covered her face with white. The end of the play. It's been so long. Why am I alone? ~ F.K. Preston

Fiction and poetry are my first loves, but the really beautiful lyrical essay can do so much that other forms cannot. ~ Chris Abani

In high school I was drawn to the study of literature, poetry Shakespeare, contemporary fiction, drama, you name it - I read it. ~ Frederick Lenz

She noticed the lemony yellow light in her dream and heard nothing of her alarm clock so continued to dream and dreamt of Jamestown and the sound of the foghorns over the water and the gulls and every night that was the breath of the day before. ~ Tiger Lewis

She's shed her skins
and plasma jeans, gets around in 2K
retro gear like the frock she wears today;
a loose, white elegy to what's been lost.
Already she's flowing back into herself
the way a river flows to fill a creek bed.
But some hard layer has washed away
and left her softer, more interested. ~ Lisa Jacobson

Could we say that the short short is to other kinds of fiction somewhat as the lyric is to other kinds of poetry? The lyric does not seek meaning through extension, it accepts the enigmas of confinement. It strives for a rapid unity of impression, an experience rendered in its wink of immediacy. And so too with the short short. ~ Irving Howe

I wanted to give you something that would last forever. Something that would surpass the world, that would still be alive and bright even after you passed away. Something beautiful. For your eyes and smile only. But I never found it. All I could give you is words. Words which were as fleeting as the heartbeats that shook my soul whenever you looked my way. ~ F.K. Preston