Robert Pinsky Quotes

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.

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

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.

A poem is free, and it shows its freedom by establishing its own principles.

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

All the mysteries of consciousness flower in the body.

Craft is something you learn by studying models.When a student asks, what is a good book about traditional iambic verse, The Collected Poems of Ben Jonson. What is an excellent book about free verse? The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams. What is a good book about short line in ballad metre? The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson.

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.

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.

An artist needs not so much an audience, as to feel a need to answer, a promise to respond....a good feeling about his art.

The voice recognizes movements and pause, similarity and difference, recognizes and understands it in a mental and physical process.

That physical tingle, that powerful audible experience(not with poets projecting their work to an audience) but more intimate, less planned than that.

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

Each work of art generate its own 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.