Dorianne Laux Quotes

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All quotes by Dorianne Laux: Books Children Students Writing more...
  • Every poem I write falls short in some important way. But I go on trying to write the one that won’t.

  • The reason I started writing was because I was a little kid in San Diego who was getting beaten up by her dad and sexually abused and because I felt different than everybody else and I had this big huge secret that was tearing me apart.

    "Road Trip". Interview with Ali Liebegott, logger.believermag.com. April 2, 2013.
  • A poem is like a child; at some point we have to let it go and trust that it will make its own way in the world.

    Kim Addonizio, Dorianne Laux (2010). “The Poet's Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry”, p.188, W. W. Norton & Company
  • How not to imagine the tumors ripening beneath his skin, flesh I have kissed, stroked with my fingertips, pressed my belly and breasts against, some nights so hard I thought I could enter him, open his back at the spine like a door or a curtain and slip in like a small fish between his ribs, nudge the coral of his brains with my lips, brushing over the blue coil of his bowels with the fluted silk of my tail.

  • I would say my life experiences are my poetry, whether I'm writing about those actual, factual experiences or not.

  • If you want to be a writer in the world you really have to sit down and say, 'Why do I want to do this and why was I drawn to it to begin with?' And keep reminding yourself to return to that original impulse.

    "Road Trip". Interview with Ali Liebegott, logger.believermag.com. April 2, 2013.
  • And I saw it didn't matter who had loved me or who I loved. I was alone. The black oily asphalt, the slick beauty of the Iranian attendant, the thickening clouds--nothing was mine. And I understood finally, after a semester of philosophy, a thousand books of poetry, after death and childbirth and the startled cries of men who called out my name as they entered me, I finally believed I was alone, felt it in my actual, visceral heart, heard it echo like a thin bell.

    Dorianne Laux (1994). “What we carry: poems”, BOA Editions Ltd.
  • We continue to speak, if only in whispers, to something inside us that longs to be named.

    Dorianne Laux (2011). “The Book of Men: Poems”, p.70, W. W. Norton & Company
  • Writing and reading are the only ways to find your voice. It won't magically burst forth in your poems the next time you sit down to write, or the next; but little by little, as you become aware of more choices and begin to make them -- consciously and unconsciously -- your style will develop.

    Kim Addonizio, Dorianne Laux (2010). “The Poet's Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry”, p.116, W. W. Norton & Company
  • You’ve traveled this far on the back of every mistake.

    "The Book of Men". Book by Dorianne Laux, February 28, 2011.
  • Someone spoke to me last night, told me the truth. Just a few words, but I recognized it. I knew I should make myself get up, write it down, but it was late, and I was exhausted from working all day in the garden, moving rocks.

    Dorianne Laux (1994). “What we carry: poems”, BOA Editions Ltd.
  • I think what life experience has brought to my poems is compassion. When you work hard to make a living, raise a child up into the world, fail at marriage and try again, teach and fail, travel and fall, become ill, well again, weak but grateful, you learn patience, forbearance.

  • We aren't suggesting that mental instability or unhappiness makes one a better poet, or a poet at all; and contrary to the romantic notion of the artist suffering for his or her work, we think these writers achieved brilliance in spite of their suffering, not because of it.

    Kim Addonizio, Dorianne Laux (2010). “The Poet's Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry”, p.58, W. W. Norton & Company
  • If trees could speak they wouldn't

  • I share my life experiences as a poet with my students. My poetic difficulties, joys, struggles and discoveries. If I read a new poem or essay or book I'm excited about, I bring it in.

  • Maybe it's what we don't say/that saves us.

    Dorianne Laux (1994). “What we carry: poems”, BOA Editions Ltd.
  • Who you are contributes to your poetry in a number of important ways, but you shouldn't identify with your poems so closely that when they are cut, you're the one that bleeds.

    Kim Addonizio, Dorianne Laux (1997). “The Poet's Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry”, p.197, W. W. Norton & Company
  • I don't know if we ever have enough distance to "see" our own trajectory. We're in the muddled middle of it. Who knows what will last, what poems will take hold of the imaginations of the future.

  • Moon In the Window I wish I could say I was the kind of child who watched the moon from her window, would turn toward it and wonder. I never wondered. I read. Dark signs that crawled toward the edge of the page. It took me years to grow a heart from paper and glue. All I had was a flashlight, bright as the moon, a white hole blazing beneath the sheets.

  • I don’t worry anymore about writing. There are times that I go through dry periods. I never go through a block. I’m always writing, but there are times where I’m just not on my game, and I’ll use that time to read some new poets, go see some art, walk down to the river and just stare at it, or have a conversation with my sister, or whatever—do whatever it is that I do in my life, hoping that I’ll get filled up enough. And something will happen, some juggling will happen and boom.

  • We're all writing out of a wound, and that's where our song comes from. The wound is singing. We're singing back to those who've been wounded.

    "Road Trip". Interview with Ali Liebegott, logger.believermag.com. April 2, 2013.
  • Joseph [Millar] is much more disciplined than I am. He's up every morning meditating, then he writes, and he reads throughout the day. He probably reads ten books to my two and writes twice as much as I do.

  • I write to invite the voices in, to watch the angel wrestle, to feel the devil gather on its haunches and rise. I write to hear myself breathing. I write to be doing something while I wait to be called to my appointment with death. I write to be done writing. I write because writing is fun.

  • I'm not the only person in the world who is suffering. I'm trying to talk to the world, responding to those voices.

    "Road Trip". Interview with Ali Liebegott, logger.believermag.com. April 2, 2013.
  • You are not your poetry. Your self-esteem shouldn't depend on whether you publish, or whether some editor or writer you admire thinks you're any good.

    Kim Addonizio, Dorianne Laux (2010). “The Poet's Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry”, p.196, W. W. Norton & Company
  • I have always loved too much, or not enough.

    Dorianne Laux (1994). “What we carry: poems”, BOA Editions Ltd.
  • W.S Merwin says "after three days of rain" and I write "After Twelve Days of Rain." I like his quietude. I admire his ability to be simple without being simplistic.

  • Poetry is an intimate act. It's about bringing forth something that's inside you--whether it is a memory, a philosophical idea, a deep love for another person or for the world, or an apprehension of the spiritual. It's about making something, in language, which can be transmitted to others--not as information, or polemic, but as irreducible art.

    Kim Addonizio, Dorianne Laux (2010). “The Poet's Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry”, p.22, W. W. Norton & Company
  • There is so much about the process of writing that is mysterious to me, but this one thing I've found to be true: writing begets writing.

  • I am the flesh boat of my experiences, we all are , my feelings, thoughts, desires and dreams are captured in my body's pliant cells, fastened onto my DNA.

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