Denise Duhamel Quotes:

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.

source: - Interview with Karla Huston, www.smartishpace.com. 2004.

Topics: Believe, Reading, Writing, Good Poetry, Reading Poetry

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.

source: - Source: therumpus.net

Topics: Writing, Trying, Topics

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

source: - Source: therumpus.net

Topics: Would Be, Clubs, Woody

Over the years, I became more and more interested in the forms and techniques in which things could be said.

source: - Source: therumpus.net

Topics: Years, Technique, Form

Not that a poem can "hurt" someone the same way a physical blow can or even a mean remark can...I just felt unsure that my tone would be taken the right way and/or unsure of my own writing, that I couldn't maintain the tone I wanted.

source: - Source: therumpus.net

Topics: Hurt, Taken, Writing, Hurts Someone

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.

source: - Source: therumpus.net

Topics: Photography, Teenager, Writing

My advice to my younger self would have been, "Chill. Concentrate on the poems. Everything else will work itself out."

source: - Source: therumpus.net

Topics: Self, Advice, Chill, Younger Self

Visual media is the dominant art form in our present day culture, whereas poetry is, at best, a proxy. Yet poetry and film are both "dream factories."

source: - Source: therumpus.net

Topics: Dream, Art, Media

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.

source: - Source: therumpus.net

Topics: Winning, Wish, Magazines

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.

source: - Source: therumpus.net

Topics: Self, Window, Psychological

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.

source: - Source: therumpus.net

Topics: Home, School, Ideas

If you are my friend and say to me, "Please don't write about this," I won't.

source: - Source: therumpus.net

Topics: Writing, Please, My Friends

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.

source: - Source: therumpus.net

Topics: Letting Go, Writing, Lines, Busting

After my marriage ended, I had an urge to skip that part of my life completely in terms of poetry, not publish anything at all about it.

source: - Source: therumpus.net

Topics: Term, Skip, Publish

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.

source: - Source: therumpus.net

Topics: Mean, Phones, Netflix, Movie Theater

I began to think about the extent to which nude and semi-nude female bodies are commonplace in our present day culture and how young girls might be affected. I wondered if, at some point, this bombardment of images could possibly get boring and that concealing - rather than revealing - would awaken sexual desire. I don't think that will ever be the case, of course, but I was intrigued to write a poem in which dressing was just as erotic as undressing.

source: - Source: therumpus.net

Topics: Girl, Writing, Thinking, Sexual Desire, Undressing

In almost every book I've written, there is a reference to a movie - legendary films, actors and actresses, and forgotten made-for-TV movies. The leaps poems make are not unlike the cuts in a film. The miniature and avant-garde prose poets have perhaps the most obvious ties to film, as a prose poem in its shape is not unlike a movie screen.

source: - Source: therumpus.net

Topics: Book, Cutting, Ties, Film Actors, Actors And Actresses

The "truth" is the poem itself. Just because someone writes a poem about a feeling she has does not mean that the feeling will stay forever. The truth of the emotion of the poem remains, even if the particular truth of the poet changes.

source: - Source: therumpus.net

Topics: Writing, Mean, Forever

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.

source: - Source: therumpus.net

Topics: Writing, Essence, Forever

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.

source: - Source: therumpus.net

Topics: Years, Issues, Political, Pause Button

I had no idea, when I was writing early on, that my poems would be published or read by anyone, never mind people I knew or would meet. I just wrote urgently - naïvely, I suppose, looking back.

source: - Source: therumpus.net

Topics: Writing, Ideas, People

I still write what I need to write - but I can't deny that something has changed when I think about sending work out. Maybe it's just growing older and feeling more responsible to the world.

source: - Source: therumpus.net

Topics: Writing, Thinking, Work Out

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.

source: - Source: therumpus.net

Topics: Way, Heard, Feels, Free Verse

In addition to writing in received forms, I have also had fun making up forms - Möbius strips and visual poems, particularly.

source: - Source: therumpus.net

Topics: Fun, Writing, Form, Had Fun

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.

source: - Source: therumpus.net

Topics: Writing, Dedication, Joy

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.

Topics: Writing, Suffering, Lucky

I always wanted to be some kind of writer - I wrote plays and songs and "books" before I realized living and breathing people still wrote poems.

Topics: Song, Book, Breathing

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.

Topics: Fashion, People, Comedian, Hairdresser, Stand Up Comedian

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.

Topics: Art, Valentine, College

The spoken word community was significant in making me want to write accessible and urgent poems. Bob Holman, in particular, was an impressive figure.

Topics: Writing, Community, Bob, Spoken Word

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!"

Topics: Asking, Wow, Wonderful, Squeezing, Wonderful Life