Reginald Gibbons

I had about 200 followers, but now for whatever reason it's down to 8, says "X," so I'm going to bail out of X. I'm not sure which choice of "social media" to make. But thanks to those of you who got something from my earlier posts.... And good luck to us all.

Gaston Bachelard: "Poetry is one of the destinies of speech."

Louise Bogan: "The apples that hand and swell for the late comer, / The simple spell, the rite not for our word, / The kisses not for our mouths--light the dark summer."

Thomas McGrath: "You out there, so secret. / What makes you think you're alone?"

Allen Grossman: "The greater function of poetry (if there can be a greater function than to bring people into discourse one with the other) is the keeping of the image of the person as precious in the world."

Adrienne Rich: "Until we can understand the assumptions in which we are drenched we cannot know ourselves."

Ben Jonson: "It is said of the incomparable Virgil, that he brought forth his verses like a bear, and [afterward] formed them with licking."

Pindar: "Weave quickly, sweet lyre, this song." (i.e.: the loom, the lyre, and the words are all related to each other)

Yannis Ritsos: "Being in the least degree 'patriotic,' I love to the greatest degree Greece."

Randall Jarrell: "If I can think of it, it isn't what I want." (But I think this is too narrow--what we think of without having expected to think it is probably valuable to the writer.)

St. John of the Cross: "I will not say what I felt, / since I remained unknowing, / transcending all knowledge."

Joseph Brodsky: American poetry "keeps its eyes wide open, not so much in wonderment, or poised for a revelation, as on the lookout for danger."

Concreteness loves the English language.

Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics: "Most of the world's 4000 languages lack or avoid rhyme in their poetries." (It may be that rhyme is an advanced poetic technology that has only occasionally been used in an advanced way.)

Jack Kerouac: "1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy. 2. Submissive to everything, open, listening."

Milosz: "In the very essence of poetry there is something indecent: a thing is brought forth which we didn't know we had in us, so we blink our eyes as if a tiger had sprung out and stood in the light, lashing his tail."

Grace Paley used to tell her writing students "You must write what nobody wants to hear." I'd recommend, "We should write what *we* don't want to hear from within ourselves!"

Christopher Bollas--his description of unconscious thinking is valuable to writers. Read his books "Cracking Up" & "Being a Character."

Robert Duncan: "The word, its sounds and meanings, may be 'recognized' by the poet, but the word itself initiates all possibilities."

Helene Cixous: about writing longhand--"it is as if I were writing on the inside of myself."