Poet Quotes

No, I don't make my work in order to challenge or confuse other people's expectations - I only do what I find natural.

My position is that since the non-secular status of my garden is not recognised by the law; by the world of the public, then the garden can only be private. So, I closed the garden to the public.

Little Sparta is a garden in the traditional sense. It is perhaps not like other modern gardens, but I think that other times would have had no difficulty with it.

If the work is pure then you have to think it could be understood. If it is not understood it doesn't mean that your work is not accessible. It doesn't worry me, but, of course, I would be pleased if people liked my work.

I have often said that just as the French revolution, for instance, understood itself through antiquity, I think our time can be understood through the French revolution. It is quite a natural process to use other times to understand your own time.

I came to these mediums through having the garden, and of course, people who have designed gardens have always worked in collaboration, and never made their own inscriptions.

I am not a modern man, I am just a wee old fashioned one.

I am always a beginner. I only try to include different parts of life; the pastoral, the tragic, et cetera.

However, I don't feel the world is looking over my shoulder when I am working - I never think about this at all. What I think about is trying to make my work pure, and if it is pure then it can be accessible. It is quite straight forward really.

For me concrete poetry was a particular way of using language which came out of a particular feeling, and I don't have control over whether this feeling is in me or not.

But you have to understand that I consider myself a very modest artist, or whatever, and not of importance really at all - it is quite embarrassing to me to be asked my opinion about things. I am only a wee Scottish poet on the outside of everything.

But I can only write what the muse allows me to write. I cannot choose, I can only do what I am given, and I feel pleased when I feel close to concrete poetry - still.

But at the beginning it was clear to me that concrete poetry was peculiarly suited for using in public settings. This was my idea, but of course I never really much got the chance to do it.

People have always found me challenging - I don't know why, when I am only being myself. I don't understand why they find me so annoying but they do. It is pity, but that is how it is.

As a friendly one. I would still like to write concrete poems, but I can only do it sometimes.

Ideas came with explosive immediacy, like an instant birth. Human thought is like a monstrous pendulum; it keeps swinging from one extreme to the other.

Here we have a baby. It is composed of a bald head and a pair of lungs.

He played the King as though under momentary apprehension that someone else was about to play the ace.

Well, I didn't know how to draw very well back then, in the '40s and '50s.

We were just a one-room bookstore; we didn't have any money for lawyers.

They were looking for a stable, but we didn't have one. In fact, we weren't very stable ourselves.

These are international criminals, and the spineless Democrats are doing nothing about it.

The paintings may communicate even better because people are lazy and they can look at a painting with less effort than they can read a poem.

The future of publishing lies with the small and medium-sized presses, because the big publishers in New York are all part of huge conglomerates.

No, I didn't become disenchanted. I just couldn't paint like them.

It's the story of an American who wants to become a dictator and goes to Europe with a sidekick to interview various Fascists to find out how the Nazis and Mussolini got into power.

It's much easier to consume the visual image than to read something.

I'm reading a book about Romaine Brooks, a wonderful painter from early in the last century.

I'd ban all automobiles from the central part of the city. You see, the automobile was just a passing fad. It's got to go. It's got to go a long way from here.

Everything the Beats stood for was the opposite of the dominant culture today.