Work in the theater sharpened my verse and my cinema.- James Broughton
Trusting your individual uniqueness challenges you to lay yourself open.
True delicacy is not a fragile thing.
Today the U.S. is farther from being nourished by poetry than it was a hundred years ago, when books of poems were best-sellers.
The quietest poetry can be an explosion of joy.
The only limits are, as always, those of vision.
The most astonishing joy is to receive from the muses the gift of a whole lyric.
The American public does not know poets exist.
Some artists shrink from self-awareness, fearing that it will destroy their unique gifts and even their desire to create. The truth of the matter is quite opposite.
Rarest of the real poets are born poets. They are the oddballs, not the professors.
Poetry for me is as much a spiritual practice as sexual ecstasy is.
My major aim in writing is to set out flags and issue wake-up calls.
My films are an extension of my poetry, using the white screen like the white page to be filled with images.
My earliest poems sing of the absolute necessity of allowing love to invade and pervade one's life. That can make the miracle happen in reality. Try it.
Most poets, like most people, try hard to be like someone they admire or they are possessed with an image of what they ought to be.
