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For the past thirty years or so, much American poetry has been marked by an earnestness that rejects the comic. This has nothing to do with seriousness. The comic can be very serious. The trouble with the earnest is that it seeks to be commended. It seeks to be praised for its intention more than for what it is saying.

Stephen Dobyns

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Stephen Dobyns
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: February 19
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Orange
New Jersey
Past
Thirty
Commended
Nothing
Comic
Earnestness
Much
Intention
Praised
Years
Poetry
Marked
Serious
Seriousness
Saying
Earnest
Trouble
Seeks
American
Rejects

More quotes by Stephen Dobyns

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I never read Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier. I've been reading books that I should have read years ago and did not. That's one of them.
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I think I made a mistake with [Jane] Austen by reading all six in a row. There are similarities to the plots so by the time I got to the last one I could anticipate what was happening too easily. But her characterizations are amazing.
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Writing is a job, a craft, and you learn it by trying to write every day and by facing the page with humility and gall. And you have to love to read books, all kinds of books, good books. You are not looking for anything in particular you are just letting stuff seep in.
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Sometimes someone will tell me about an author I've never heard of before and that will send me to that person. That's how I discovered Thomas Bernhard, an Austrian novelist whose novels tend to be one long rant.
Stephen Dobyns
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I write poems to find out why I write them
Stephen Dobyns
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It was as if pain were a room he had entered and the door had been locked behind him.
Stephen Dobyns
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I majored in English in college and that was my major in graduate school before switching to creative writing. I read a lot of [Charles] Dickens and [Anthony ] Trollope, but there was lots of stuff I hadn't read like Thackeray's Vanity Fair, which is so well written and funny.
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He thinks of that ocean house and wishes he were back in his former life or that one could take one moment and remain inside it like an egg inside its shell, instead of constantly being hurried into the future by good luck or bad.
Stephen Dobyns
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Baudelaire's L'Héautontimorouménos was long seen to be a sexual sadomasochistic poem, it is now generally accepted that the poem is about writing poetry.
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I can't believe there is a poet who hasn't eagerly put down a word one day, only to erase it the next day deciding it was sheer lunacy. It's part of the process of selection.
Stephen Dobyns
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They are asleep. This is the condition they prefer. They are afraid of the world and sleep is a way of dealing with their fear. Someday they will wake. Perhaps something frightful will happen. Indeed, there is no better invitation to the frightful than ignorance - that is, sleep. (29)
Stephen Dobyns
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Most women are more into real estate than sex. They want to own you.
Stephen Dobyns
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I'm reading a manuscript by Rodney Jones, Village Prodigies,it's one of the best contemporary poetry books I've ever read ever.
Stephen Dobyns
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These people you used to see every day, friends or acquaintances, after a while they become as distant as any stranger, people you suddenly recall late at night--you remember something they said or something silly that someone once did. For a few moments they completely occupy your mind then you forget them again.
Stephen Dobyns
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Reading a good poem can give me a far bigger kick than a novel. But it's not something I can keep doing. It would be like shooting up 10 times a day.
Stephen Dobyns
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Actions have consequences. Ignorance about the nature of those actions does not free a person from responsibility for the consequences. (28)
Stephen Dobyns
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I'm reading The Sunset of a Splendid Century by W.H. Lewis. He was C.S. Lewis's brother. He wrote two books about the French court of Louis XIV that are incredibly detailed. They are books that on every page you say, Wow, think of that.
Stephen Dobyns
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Other than fiction and poetry I tend to read history.
Stephen Dobyns
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One writes a poem when one is so taken up by an emotional concept that one is unable to remain silent.
Stephen Dobyns
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I like it to be quiet, and it usually occurs in the morning. There are three or four places in my house where I can write and I like to keep moving around. The moment I find myself falling into a necessary routine, I change it. I'd rather not accumulate superstitions.
Stephen Dobyns