Wayne Koestenbaum - Poetry

Poetry

Koestenbaum's poetry is often more measured than his criticism. It frequently comments on itself—on the disorderly process of poetry—as in "Men I Led Astray" (from The Milk of Inquiry):

I haven't said enough about the ragged sun,
its satisfaction in being the one to bind my life—
to bring the filthy pieces together,
on its way to more important tasks.

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Famous quotes containing the word poetry:

    Firm in our beliefs without dismay,
    In any game the nations want to play.
    A golden age of poetry and power
    Of which this noonday’s the beginning hour.
    Robert Frost (1874–1963)

    Prose—it might be speculated—is discourse; poetry ellipsis. Prose is spoken aloud; poetry overheard. The one is presumably articulate and social, a shared language, the voice of “communication”; the other is private, allusive, teasing, sly, idiosyncratic as the spider’s delicate web, a kind of witchcraft unfathomable to ordinary minds.
    Joyce Carol Oates (b. 1938)

    Poetry is concerned with using with abusing, with losing
    with wanting, with denying with avoiding with adoring
    with replacing the noun. It is doing that always
    doing that, doing that and doing nothing but that.
    Poetry is doing nothing but using losing refusing and
    pleasing and betraying and caressing nouns. That is
    what poetry does, that is what poetry has to do no
    matter what kind of poetry it is. And there are a
    great many kinds of poetry.
    Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)