James Tate Quotes

Poetry is a kind of ingenious nonsense (Spence, Anecdotes

We all write poems; it is simply that poets are the ones who write in words.

I read mostly poetry.

I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little or make a poem which children will speak for you when you're dead.

When you're writing something that is truly original it takes time.

I'm a poet.

Poetry is a kind of ingenious nonsense.

Words, yes, formulating things, creating something from your heart, it is something very necessary, yes.

Writing is more about imagination than anything else. I fell in love with words. I fell in love with storytelling.

I think the writing of literature should give pleasure. What else should it be about? It is not nuclear physics. It actually has to give pleasure or it is worth nothing.

Well-written words are music.

I write all the time - I write poetry, I love to write.

Poetry is not a matter of feelings, it is a matter of language. It is language which creates feelings.

A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.

Words are the basic tools, if you are a writer. But why? Why do you choose one set of tools rather than another?

The pen is the tongue of the mind.

I love playing with words and texture.

Poetry is ordinary language raised to the Nth power. Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words.

I loved words. I love to sing them and speak them and even now, I must admit, I have fallen into the joy of writing them.

I like playing around with the words; I love it when I feel like I've picked the exact right word to describe whatever it is I'm trying to describe.

I started writing as soon as I started reading.

I'm happy to be a writer - of prose, poetry, every kind of writing. Every person in the world who isn't a recluse, hermit or mute uses words. I know of no other art form that we always use.

I was a serious poet for quite a while and had little notebooks filled with poetry.

Take a commonplace, clean it and polish it, light it so that it produces the same effect of youth and freshness and originality and spontaneity as it did originally, and you have done a poet's job. The rest is literature.

What my character is or how many jails I have lounged in, or wards or walls or wassails, how many lonely-heart poetry readings I have dodged, is beside the point. A man's soul or lack of it will be evident with what he can carve upon a white sheet of paper.