Quote

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.

Dorianne Laux

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Dorianne Laux
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: January 10
Poet
Writer
Augusta
Maine
Time
Next
Aware
Become
Begin
Magically
Littles
Style
Unconsciously
Find
Ways
Burst
Little
Choices
Consciously
Writing
Reading
Poems
Way
Voice
Forth
Make
Write
Develop

More quotes by Dorianne Laux

Image
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.
Dorianne Laux
Image
That's how it is sometimes--God comes to your window, all bright light and black wings, and you're just too tired to open it.
Dorianne Laux
Image
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.
Dorianne Laux
Image
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.
Dorianne Laux
Image
We continue to speak, if only in whispers, to something inside us that longs to be named.
Dorianne Laux
Image
I have always loved too much, or not enough.
Dorianne Laux
Image
Every poem I write falls short in some important way. But I go on trying to write the one that won’t.
Dorianne Laux
Image
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.
Dorianne Laux
Image
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.
Dorianne Laux
Image
You’ve traveled this far on the back of every mistake.
Dorianne Laux
Image
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.
Dorianne Laux
Image
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.
Dorianne Laux
Image
The more that accrues, the more depth, weight, and breadth we can bring to the poems, which we then need to throw overboard so we don't sink.
Dorianne Laux
Image
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
Image
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.
Dorianne Laux
Image
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.
Dorianne Laux
Image
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.
Dorianne Laux
Image
Tinted Distances is a tender meditation that reveals a careful eye and steady devotion to elegy and ode.
Dorianne Laux
Image
I also have my backpack of the tried-and-true, and because it is new to [my students], it becomes fresh to me again as well.
Dorianne Laux
Image
I would say my life experiences are my poetry, whether I'm writing about those actual, factual experiences or not.
Dorianne Laux