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Unlike Woody Allen, I would be happy to be part of any (poetry) club that would have me.

Denise Duhamel

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Denise Duhamel
Age: 63
Born: 1961
Born: January 1
Poet
Writer
Woonsocket
Rhode Island
Would
Allen
Woody
Unlike
Club
Clubs
Poetry
Happy
Part

More quotes by Denise Duhamel

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Jean Valentine and Jane Cooper were my professors at Sarah Lawrence College - and they were uncompromised in their art. They gave me models of how to live one's life as a poet.
Denise Duhamel
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The biggest poems I ever made are based on the psychological principal of the Johari Window: what the self freely shares with others what the self hides from others what others hide from the self and what is unknown to the self and others.
Denise Duhamel
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What has stayed true in my life as a writer is my dedication to writing - I try to write every day, no matter what - and the joy that writing has given me.
Denise Duhamel
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Writing is performative - and while, yes, the words in essence will be there forever, poems are often about ecstatic moments rather than trying to pin down a particular truth of an event.
Denise Duhamel
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I started wanting desperately to say something, to make a point, to be heard - and I still feel that way. Free verse served me best when I embarked on poetry.
Denise Duhamel
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I have no idea, actually, where I fit in, in terms of poetry camps. At AWP conferences, I have been on panels about humor, collaboration, visual poetry, confessional poetry, gender, and the body, as well as tributes to Edward Field and Albert Goldbarth. I felt at home on all of them - most poets straddle more than one school.
Denise Duhamel
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The spoken word community was significant in making me want to write accessible and urgent poems. Bob Holman, in particular, was an impressive figure.
Denise Duhamel
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I believe it's impossible to write good poetry without reading. Reading poetry goes straight to my psyche and makes me want to write. I meet the muse in the poems of others and invite her to my poems. I see over and over again, in different ways, what is possible, how the perimeters of poetry are expanding and making way for new forms.
Denise Duhamel
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I am open to squeezing in whatever I can in this wonderful life. Instead of asking, Is that all there is? I seem, lately, to be always saying, Wow!
Denise Duhamel
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Over the years, I became more and more interested in the forms and techniques in which things could be said.
Denise Duhamel
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My advice to my younger self would have been, Chill. Concentrate on the poems. Everything else will work itself out.
Denise Duhamel
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I am interested in the confines of the page and busting through/off the page as well. A writer must let go of the line when writing prose poems, which brings its own pleasures.
Denise Duhamel
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As a teenager, I loved acting, painting, photography, and making films with my friend's Super 8 camera. But I always loved writing the best. I chose writing even before I knew poetry was available to me.
Denise Duhamel
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I don't know if there are topics that I unconsciously avoid, but as soon as they pop up in my writing, I try to take on those topics, whether or not I publish the poems.
Denise Duhamel
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If you are my friend and say to me, Please don't write about this, I won't.
Denise Duhamel
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While poetry was less professionalized than it is now, I still had this urge to win prizes and see my work in magazines, to get an A, as though poetry could be graded. I wish I had been more patient and less frantic about getting published.
Denise Duhamel
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Though it does seem like I have written an immense amount of work, over the years I have pushed the pause button. I have poems that I haven't sent out for publication, mostly based on political/social issues.
Denise Duhamel
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I love going to movie theaters, even in the era of movies on-demand and Netflix. When you are in a movie theater, no one can reach you by phone or other means.
Denise Duhamel
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I also could see myself as a stand-up comedian, a fashion designer (for people of all sizes), a hairdresser, an earnest and eventually burnt-out politician, or the owner of a small bistro. But I fear that, without poetry, I would have simply been going through the motions.
Denise Duhamel
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I know writers for whom the act of writing is a necessary chore. They suffer to write great work. I am very lucky that for me writing is a delight.
Denise Duhamel