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I do own CDs by Neil Young, Leonard Cohen, and Joni Mitchell, but I don't think of them as being major influences on my writing.

James Arthur

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James Arthur
Age: 36
Born: 1988
Born: March 2
Guitarist
Musician
Singer
Singer-Songwriter
Songwriter
James Andrew Arthur
Think
Leonard
Thinking
Mitchell
Neil
Influences
Major
Influence
Young
Writing
Cohen

More quotes by James Arthur

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I do consider myself Canadian, but I feel American, too. I've spent more than fifteen years in each of the two countries, so really I just think of myself as a dual citizen, which is what I am. Thankfully, I've never been forced to choose!
James Arthur
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Years ago I used to set my alarm for 4 am, so that I could wake up in the middle of a dream and move directly into writing. I guess my favorite poems contain a mixture of intuitive and analytical thought.
James Arthur
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If poems very different from my own bring pleasure to a group of readers, who am I to say that the poems should have been written differently?
James Arthur
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When I'm most deeply involved in my writing, sometimes I do dream about poetry, and occasionally I wake up from a dream with a phrase that I like well enough to put it in a poem.
James Arthur
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Memorizing the work of others definitely made me a better writer.
James Arthur
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I'm a mix I'm sure some of my Canadian friends find me very American, both in person and on the page.
James Arthur
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Maybe because I can't even put together an IKEA desk, I've never been tempted to think of my own poems as built objects - but I do sometimes imagine them as mathematical constructs.
James Arthur
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My ideal reader is somebody who reads my poems out loud.
James Arthur
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When you recite you're giving a performance, in the way that an actor or a singer performs, and some poets are not interested in doing that, maybe because they're writing for a readership as opposed to an audience, or because they see poetry as a very private art.
James Arthur
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I don't see why a poem couldn't be spoken out a car window or written on the beach at low tide. In fact, I'm sure people are doing it.
James Arthur
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I want to reiterate that my understanding of the poem is not the poem's core, true meaning. Once a poem goes out into the world, the poet is just one more reader.
James Arthur
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For me, poetry is a way of thinking, and like many poets, I'm driven by the idea of trying to find the impossible, perfect words: the words that will hold my subject.
James Arthur
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I don't think I did write any poems to fill narrative gaps. Not consciously, anyway. As much as possible, I try to discover my poems' subject matter through the act of writing, instead of deciding ahead of time what my poems will be about.
James Arthur
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When I started reciting my own poems in public, I worried that it would seem too theatrical, but now I find recitation very natural, because it allows me to address audiences directly.
James Arthur
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I often write from memory by walking around and talking to myself. Even when I'm working at a computer I write out loud, so that I can hear the poem's rhythm.
James Arthur
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I don't think I'd ever get any better as a poet if I didn't push myself, very deliberately, to grow. My best poems surprise me, as they should, but I fight them at every turn, possibly just because I'm stubborn.
James Arthur
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Whenever I visit my family in Canada, I remind myself that what many Americans would consider forthright, many Canadians would consider overbearing.
James Arthur
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In my case, performance is part of the medium. Sometimes I feel that it's my main medium, and that the presentation of my poems on the page is secondary.
James Arthur
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I like poems that affect me emotionally and also provoke me to further, deeper thought. I enjoy challenge, but not, I think, for its own sake.
James Arthur
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For me, intuitive thinking means associative thinking intuition causes us to introduce narrative or figurative elements into a poem before we're able to explain why those elements belong.
James Arthur