We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.
In the Nordic countries, there are hardly any societal problems, but we writers are bloodthirsty people like anyone else, so we have to quench this thirst with literature. If you live in a mafia state with lots of violence on the streets, you tend to write beautiful poetry.
Poetry should help, not only to refine the language of the time, but to prevent it from changing too rapidly.
As a schoolboy, poetry seemed defined by preciousness. It was all very rarefied.
If a line of poetry strays into my memory, my skin bristles so that the razor ceases to act.
Experience has taught me, when I am shaving of a morning, to keep watch over my thoughts, because, if a line of poetry strays into my memory, my skin bristles so that the razor ceases to act.
The older I've got the less I find myself going back and re-reading or really reading new fiction or poetry.
I don't think poetry has a readership anywhere, really, that's that big.
I was reading poetry to my girlfriends, and they were like, 'You're really good. You should go to some poetry readings or something.' And I eventually went and got a, you know, somewhat of a name for myself and a little bit of a following.
In my late teenage years, I developed a real passion for it, and wrote a lot of poetry.
The poem is not, as someone put it, deflective of entry. But the real question is, 'What happens to the reader once he or she gets inside the poem?' That's the real question for me, is getting the reader into the poem and then taking the reader somewhere, because I think of poetry as a kind of form of travel writing.
I did literature at university, so I had a real relationship with poetry, but they don't make many films about the world of a poet.
This proves that great lyric poetry can die, be reborn, die again, but will always remain one of the most outstanding creations of the human soul.
Poetry is a vocal art for me - but not necessarily a performative one. It might be reading to oneself or recalling some lines by memory.
But the gravest difficulty, and perhaps the most important, in poetry meant solely for recitation, is the difficulty of achieving verbal beauty, or rather of making verbal beauty tell.
Poetry comes alive to me through recitation.
The Lord's Prayer is the most perfect piece of poetry. I always feel at peace and moved when I recite it.
My childhood was all about going to church, singing in church. And later on, after I got a little older, my mother taught me how to do poems for Easter and Mother's Day, recitals and so on. I got attached to that, so as I got older and older, I began to recite poetry.
I remember how as I kid I would love stories of every kind - whether they were narrated in school or what I read in books. Storytelling would always appeal to me, I would take part in poetry reciting, dramatics, choreography and debates. There was this fascination for performance, which finally culminated in a professional sphere.
I believed in fictional characters as if they were a part of real life. Poetry was important, too. My parents had memorized poems from their days attending school in New York City and loved reciting them. We all enjoyed listening to these poems and to music as well.
