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Often when I write poetry I don't quite know what I'm saying myself. I mean, I can't restate the poem. The meaning of the poem is the poem.

Pattiann Rogers

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Pattiann Rogers
Age: 84
Born: 1940
Born: March 23
Poet
Writer
Joplin
Missouri
Writing
Poem
Meaning
Poetry
Saying
Quite
Often
Write
Mean
Restate

More quotes by Pattiann Rogers

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I'm primarily a poet, so I'd have to say in my case I'd investigate the mystery in poetry in a different way than prose might investigate it, in a way that includes the power of the music of language and maybe more imaginatively in poetry, but I don't really know about better or worse. I guess it depends on the writer.
Pattiann Rogers
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I think my prose - mine and that of others - sometimes slips into a cadence or rhythm that can replicate or come close to the music in a wonderful poem, and then it returns to the sound of prose.
Pattiann Rogers
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When the music created by the sounds and ordering of the words matches the thrust of the meanings of the words, then a radiant state of awareness can occur.
Pattiann Rogers
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Poetry doesn't function by saying things straightforwardly because the language is too imprecise, too limited often, to address the underlying subject of most poems.
Pattiann Rogers
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I'd rather call prose poems something else, for clarity - something like poetic prose, prose that contains a quality of poetry, but not poems.
Pattiann Rogers
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As far as I can tell, writing the essays didn't change the way I wrote poetry. Although the essays contain scattered passages that might be called lyrical, they often contain closed statements of what is only suggested in the poetry.
Pattiann Rogers
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Often I'm struck by something that I read then I go and research it a little more, especially if I begin a poem, and I find out that I need to know more. Then I usually get intrigued and excited about whatever it is I'm writing about.
Pattiann Rogers
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The greatest tragedy that can befall a poet is to be praised by being misunderstood.
Pattiann Rogers
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In poetry I can let the language go, allow an image that seems out of place to enter and see what happens, always listening to the music that's being created, just like the world around us, never predictable, always shifting and intertwining, reflecting and echoing itself.
Pattiann Rogers
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The poem is a process, a way for me to discover questions, to ask them clearly or to discover the results of certain suppositions. Suppositions are a form of questioning.
Pattiann Rogers
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What triggers a poem for me is not the same as what triggers an essay. My mind is geared now to looking for, or to watching out for, the image that attracts my attention or the phrase or the strange juxtaposition that strikes me bodily, or an odd question or supposition.
Pattiann Rogers
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People sometimes think that defining a term is pedantic and useless, but terms need to be defined if they're going to be discussed, even if the terms are only defined for a single conversation. Those involved in the conversation need to know how the terms are being used.
Pattiann Rogers
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I do love writing prose interspersed with the poetry of other people. Their rhythms break into my prose and create a connection.
Pattiann Rogers
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I have thought for many years that the audience any creative writer imagines has a great effect on what gets written.
Pattiann Rogers
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From the beginning I felt that I didn't ever want to leave the impression that the process of writing a poem is totally mysterious. I couldn't explain everything that went on in the creation of a poem, but I could try to explain as much as I knew. I thought readers deserved that. I didn't want to set myself apart as being someone special.
Pattiann Rogers
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Poetry is very playful with language. I think all poetry, at its heart, is playful. It's doing unusual and playful things with the language, stirring it up. And prose is not doing that. Primarily it's not attempting to do that.
Pattiann Rogers
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To my mind, most prose poems are more prose than poetry. They don't possess most of the qualities of a poem.
Pattiann Rogers
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I'm all in favor of poets telling about the process as much as they can. And many do.
Pattiann Rogers
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How can I appreciate light from an aging sun shining through new configurations neither pine nor ash? How can I extol the nuturing fragrances from the spires, the spicules of a landscape not yet formed or seeded?
Pattiann Rogers
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It sounds old-fashioned to say, but we have some kind of purpose for being here, not poets or writers, but all of us humans.
Pattiann Rogers