Quotes by Marilyn Hacker
Good writing gives energy, whatever it is about.
The narrative quality of Khoury-Ghata's work-narrative inflected by surrealism and by tropes from Arabic poetry - appeals to me.
When you are in a university, paradoxically, it makes those intergenerational relationships between writers more problematic.
I wonder what it means about American literary culture and its transmission when I consider the number of American poets who earn their living teaching creative writing in universities. I've ended up doing that myself.
Editing a journal is a different kind of engagement. You are free to engage yourself only with the work that first engages you, whether it's by someone by whom nobody has yet read a line, or by Adrienne Rich or Hayden Carruth.
In France, the initial entry into publication in journals depends much more upon pre-existing connections and allegiances.
The phenomenon of university creative writing programs doesn't exist in France. The whole idea is regarded as a novelty, or an oddity.
I wouldn't recommend that anyone go to university at 15. It really is like giving a fifty-dollar bill to a child and turning her loose in a Godiva chocolate shop.
Given the devaluation of literature and of the study of foreign languages per se in the United States, as well as the preponderance of theory over text in graduate literature studies, creative writing programs keep literature courses populated.
I tend to use iambic pentameter instead of the Alexandrine, which sounds odd in English, which is more abbreviated than French anyway. It's a pleasant challenge, and it's an interesting form.
I'm addicted to email, but other than that, there are practical things - being able to buy a book on the internet that you can't find in your local bookshop. This could be a lifeline if you live further from the sources.
I don't know whether a poem has be there to help to develop something. I think it's there for itself, for what the reader finds in it.
It's bad luck to drown a postman.
