Jan Clausen famous quotes

the attempt to control poetry, to subordinate it to extra-poetic ends, constitutes misuse.
-- Jan Clausen

#Poetry #Poetic #Misuse

we are far too used to the assumption that poetry and poets will be there when we want them, no matter how long they have been ignored, taken for granted, misused. After all, isn't poetry a form of prophecy, and aren't prophets known for their talent for flourishing in inhospitable deserts and other bleak surroundings? Maybe. But maybe not indefinitely.
-- Jan Clausen

#Taken #Long #Poetry

You cannot escape sex. It will track you to the ends of the earth.
-- Jan Clausen

#Sex #Track #Earth

... the attempt to control poetry, to subordinate it to extrapoetic ends, constitutes misuse.... it may be poetry's stubborn quality of rockbottom, intrinsic uselessness whichconstitutes the guarantee of its integrity, and hence of its ultimate value to us.
-- Jan Clausen

#Integrity #Poetry #Feminism

I sometimes have the sense that I live my life as a writer with my nose pressed against the wide, shiny plate glass window of the"mainstream" culture. The world seems full of straight, large-circulation, slick periodicals which wouldn't think of reviewing my book and bookstores which will never order it.
-- Jan Clausen

#Book #Thinking #Order

Even when poetry has a meaning, as it usually has, it may be inadvisable to draw it out . . .. Perfect understanding will sometimes almost extinguish pleasure.

Can you remember? when we thought the poets taught how to live?

Truth shines the brighter, clad in verse.

A poem round and perfect as a star.

But now, you are twain, you are cloven apart Flesh of his flesh, but heart of my heart.

Much contemporary verse reads like failed short-short stories rather than failed poetry.

Most of my life I have played a lot of famous people but most of them were dead so you have a poetic license.

I've read there is no such thing as a single tear, that old poetic trope. And perhaps there isn't, since hers was simply a companion to my own.

Worry is a misuse of your imagination.

All the things of the wild have their proper uses. Only misuse makes them evil.