A good many of my poems over the years have alluded to or taken on the political. Stevens … - Stephen Dunn

11, coincident with the breakup of a marriage, the finding of new love, some kind of personal cataclysm. . . all of those were forces informing the poems in some way.">

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Only in prayer do we achieve that complete and harmonious assembly of body, mind, and spirit which gives the frail human reed its unshakable strength.

Stephen Dunn

A good many of my poems over the years have alluded to or taken on the political. Stevens has a line in one of his essays: "Reality exerts pressure on the imagination. " Inevitably what is omnipresent in the culture exerts its pressure on our imaginations to respond to it, even if indirectly. But in this case the backdrop of 9
11, coincident with the breakup of a marriage, the finding of new love, some kind of personal cataclysm. . . all of those were forces informing the poems in some way.

Breakup, Exerts, Marriage, Reality, Stevens, Taken

Same Author Quotes

And the words we find are always insufficient, like love, though they are often lovely and all we have.

Insufficient, Like, Like Love, Love, Lovely

I’ve had it with all stingy-hearted sons of bitches. A heart is to be spent.

Bitches, Heart, Hearted, Son, Spent

What feeling feels like over time. An attempt to screw up what feeling feels like over time. Heartbreak and a high C. . . . The often welcome melodic lie. . . . The soul's undersong. The orchestration of randomness, a flirtation with the boundaries of silence and space. . . . a reminder that the self wants to disappear, be taken away from itself and returned.

Attempt, Heartbreak, Lying, Music, Returned, Taken

I wrote poetry for seven or eight years, maybe longer, before I could say I was a poet. If people asked, I'd say I wrote poetry; I wouldn't go further. I was in my mid- to late-thirties before I felt that I was a poet, which I think meant that I had begun to embody my poems in some way. I wasn't just a writer of them. Hard to say what, as a poet, my place in the world is. Some place probably between recognition and neglect.

Eight, Longer, People, Recognition, Thinking, World

There are always the simple events of your life that you might try to convert into legend.

Convert, Events, Legend, Simple, Trying