Writing
Souster is a chronicler of his birth city. Robert Fulford wrote that "many of us think of him first as the poet-in-chief of Toronto. A city comes to life only after writers have invented it, and Souster has been among Toronto's inventors, adding a layer of poetic reality to the abstractions of asphalt, glass, and brick. His Toronto poems work like photographs in the Henri Cartier-Bresson tradition, inscribing small pieces of space and time on the memory, catching a moment as it flies."
Souster was the Canadian poet of his generation most overtly interested in, and influenced by, the contemporary American scene. He was first attracted to Henry Miller, and later entered into lasting friendships and correspondence with Robert Creeley and Cid Corman.
Read more about this topic: Raymond Souster
Famous quotes containing the word writing:
“When, said Mr. Phillips, he communicated to a New Bedford audience, the other day, his purpose of writing his life, and telling his name, and the name of his master, and the place he ran from, the murmur ran round the room, and was anxiously whispered by the sons of the Pilgrims, “He had better not!” and it was echoed under the shadow of the Concord monument, “He had better not!””
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The question mark is alright when it is all alone when it
is used as a brand on cattle or when it could be used
in decoration but connected with writing it is
completely entirely completely uninteresting.... A
question is a question, anybody can know that a
question is a question and so why add to it the
question mark when it is already there when the
question is already there in the writing.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“In our period, they say there is free speech.
They say there is no penalty for poets,
There is no penalty for writing poems.
They say this. This is the penalty.”
—Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980)