James Arthur famous quotes

Start listening to what you say. Are your comments and ideas negative? You aren't going become positive if you always say negative things. Do you hear yourself say"I could never do that","I never have any luck","I never get things right". Wow - that's negative self-talk! Try saying"I am going to do that","I am so lucky""I always try to get things right". Can you hear how much better that sounds?
-- James Arthur

#Inspiring #Self #Ideas

If poems very different from my own bring pleasure to a group of readers, who am I to say that the poems should have been written differently?
-- James Arthur

#Should Have #Groups #Different

For me, poetry is a way of thinking, and like many poets, I'm driven by the idea of trying to find the impossible, perfect words: the words that will hold my subject.
-- James Arthur

#Thinking #Ideas #Perfect

My ideal reader is somebody who reads my poems out loud.
-- James Arthur

#Loud #Reader #Ideals

It makes sense to me that the polyglot wouldn't know what language he dreamed in.
-- James Arthur

#Language #Polyglots #Make Sense

As a species, we create tools to control our environment. What excites my imagination is wilderness: our materials' ability to escape our control.
-- James Arthur

#Imagination #Tools #Environment

Poetry isn't an efficient tool for preserving experience, any more than it's an efficient mode of communication, but who says that it should be efficient?
-- James Arthur

#Communication #Tools #Should

In my case, performance is part of the medium. Sometimes I feel that it's my main medium, and that the presentation of my poems on the page is secondary.
-- James Arthur

#Pages #Sometimes #Cases

Memorizing the work of others definitely made me a better writer.
-- James Arthur

#Made #Memorizing

I like poems that affect me emotionally and also provoke me to further, deeper thought. I enjoy challenge, but not, I think, for its own sake.
-- James Arthur

#Thinking #Challenges #Sake

I do own CDs by Neil Young, Leonard Cohen, and Joni Mitchell, but I don't think of them as being major influences on my writing.
-- James Arthur

#Writing #Thinking #Influence

It's true, there aren't many explicit references to Canada in my book. And not many explicit references to the U.S., either. I try to fill my poems with enough real, observed detail that the poems create a believable world - but I don't write poems for the sake of telling my own story. My life is not important or interesting enough to warrant that kind of documentary. Instead I try to use my experience as a way of understanding situations that are common to many people. I want readers to project their own lives onto my poems.
-- James Arthur

#Real #Book #Writing

Our analytical faculties allow us to look critically at our writing and interpret it. Sometimes we make bold, impulsive edits to our poems, but most forms of precision and economy in poetry, it seems to me, are signatures of the analytical mind.
-- James Arthur

#Writing #Mind #Signatures

When you recite you're giving a performance, in the way that an actor or a singer performs, and some poets are not interested in doing that, maybe because they're writing for a readership as opposed to an audience, or because they see poetry as a very private art.
-- James Arthur

#Art #Writing #Giving

I often write from memory by walking around and talking to myself. Even when I'm working at a computer I write out loud, so that I can hear the poem's rhythm.
-- James Arthur

#Memories #Writing #Talking

It's not realistic to imagine that any poem will last forever. Our species won't last forever! We try to capture and preserve our impressions of reality because it's all going away: everything we think and remember, everything we've ever felt, everyone we love.
-- James Arthur

#Reality #Thinking #Remembers Everything

I don't see why a poem couldn't be spoken out a car window or written on the beach at low tide. In fact, I'm sure people are doing it.
-- James Arthur

#Beach #People #Car

I like poems that immediately claim my attention, instead of taking my attention for granted. At first read, I want to feel compelled to pick up the poem again; I want to be curious about its byways and secret corners.
-- James Arthur

#Secret #Attention #Want

For me, intuitive thinking means associative thinking; intuition causes us to introduce narrative or figurative elements into a poem before we're able to explain why those elements belong.
-- James Arthur

#Mean #Thinking #Intuition

Years ago I used to set my alarm for 4 am, so that I could wake up in the middle of a dream and move directly into writing. I guess my favorite poems contain a mixture of intuitive and analytical thought.
-- James Arthur

#Dream #Moving #Writing

I don't think I'd ever get any better as a poet if I didn't push myself, very deliberately, to grow. My best poems surprise me, as they should, but I fight them at every turn, possibly just because I'm stubborn.
-- James Arthur

#Fighting #Thinking #Stubborn

If art doesn't require an audience, can an intimate conversation be a work of art? Can a thought be a work of art? Maybe. I don't know. These questions are completely hypothetical for me, because I love interacting with audiences. I want my poems to be heard.
-- James Arthur

#Art #Intimate Conversation #Want

When I started reciting my own poems in public, I worried that it would seem too theatrical, but now I find recitation very natural, because it allows me to address audiences directly.
-- James Arthur

#Addresses #Worried #Natural

I believe strongly in what John Keats called negative capability: the trait or practice that allows a poet to remain in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason. For Keats, William Shakespeare exemplified negative capability, and I do think it's extraordinary that for all the thousands of pages Shakespeare left behind, we really don't know much about Shakespeare's own personality or opinions.
-- James Arthur

#Believe #Thinking #Personality