Robert Pinsky Quotes

The poet is a particular kind of expert.

An underestimated element in poetry, that reading aloud makes clear, is the pause. I mean especially the force of a pause or a couple of pauses close together, contrasted with a longer unit of grammar.

Poetry is the most bodliy of arts, the medium of poetry is the column of breath rising from the diaphragm in the individual's chest to be shaped into meaning sounds inside the mouth of whoever undertakes to say the poem.

I think what holds a poem like this together for me, if it’s held together, is largely meter; this one is in iambic pentameter and iambic pentameter whatever else it is, can be a very good glue. It is a very good way to hold things together. It’s like 4:4 you know.

There are no rules but uniformity can make it seem as though there are rules.

I am very interested in memorization which is the process of incorporating a poem, so, I would say the kind of poetry I write is the kind that emphasises the physical qualities of the words.

Poetry is a vocal art for me, not neccessarilyperformative, it might be reading to one self or recalling some lines by memory.The speaker bringing their own experience to it,changing it with their own sensibility.

Part of making a poem is a process of day- dreaming.

There are no rules. However, principles may be discerned in actual practice; for example, in the way people actually speak, or in the lines the poets have written.

Every word is an abstraction or category, not a particular.

No aspect of a poem is more singular, more unique, than its rhythm.

The poetry I love is written with someone’s voice and I believe its proper culmination is to be read with someone’s voice. And the human voice in that sense is not electronically reproduced or amplified.

It is the nature of poetry to emphasize that the physical sounds of words come from a particular body , one at a time, in a particular order.

Each work of art generate its own rules

All the mysteries of consciousness flower in the body.