If I begin a poem, "I am a donkey," reason kicks in and says, "She is taking on … - Matthea Harvey

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Desperate Housewives' was a good experience, though, as I got to play the bad guy for once. My only complaint was they had me in a lot of sweaters.

Matthea Harvey

If I begin a poem, "I am a donkey," reason kicks in and says, "She is taking on the persona of a donkey. " But if I write, "I have taken so many drugs I can't see my feet," the tendency is to take that as a confession on the part of the poet. Maybe that doesn't matter. I'd almost prefer for it to be the other way round.

Feet, Matter, Prefer, Taken, Tendency, Writing

Same Author Quotes

S. E. Smith's I Live in a Hut has a deceptively simple title, considering that the brain in that hut contains galaxies-worth of invention: At night when your soldiers are praying ceaselessly for less rain and more underwear my soldiers make underwear out of rain. These poems seesaw between despair and delight but delight is winning the battle. Smith is a somersaulting tightrope walker of a poet and her poems will make you look at anything and everything with new eyes: For days I tried to rub the new freckle

off my hand until I realized what it was
and began to grant it its sovereignty.

Despair, Everything, Eye, Make, Rain, Simple

Poetic success is when you write a poem that makes you excited and bewildered and aglow.

Bewildered, Excited, Poetic, Write, Writing

When I get interested in a new topic I teach a class on it. There's a graduate seminar I teach in which the students and I try to expand the terminology we use to talk about poetry as well as expand our notion of what makes a poem - we read source texts on architecture, dance, photography, film and the graphic novel.

Class, Expand, Graphic, Interested, Photography, Trying

I do love the prose poem because it's such a perverse and provocative little box - always asking to be questioned, never giving a straight or definitive answer.

Answers, Asking, Giving, Poem, Questioned

Writing directly from a feeling of anger or sadness is difficult, but if you distract part of your brain with word games, the ignored emotion often tiptoes in.

Brain, Difficult, Games, Sadness, Writing