I try to avoid calling myself a poet because I think that's something someone else has to call you. It's like bragging. — Dorianne Laux Copy Share Image
A poem is like a child; at some point we have to let it go and trust that it will make its… — Dorianne Laux Copy Share Image
Every good poem asks a question, and every good poet asks every question. — Dorianne Laux Copy Share 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 Copy Share Image
The more that accrues, the more depth, weight, and breadth we can bring to the poems, which we then need to throw… — Dorianne Laux Copy Share Image
I would say my life experiences are my poetry, whether I'm writing about those actual, factual experiences or not. — Dorianne Laux Copy Share Image
I share my life experiences as a poet with my students. My poetic difficulties, joys, struggles and discoveries. If I read a… — Dorianne Laux Copy Share Image
I don't know if we ever have enough distance to "see" our own trajectory. We're in the muddled middle of it. Who… — Dorianne Laux Copy Share Image
Who you are contributes to your poetry in a number of important ways, but you shouldn't identify with your poems so closely… — Dorianne Laux Copy Share 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… — Dorianne Laux Copy Share Image
I feel deep gratitude for the life poetry has allowed me to live. I know the life I could have lived without… — Dorianne Laux Copy Share Image
I think what life experience has brought to my poems is compassion. When you work hard to make a living, raise a… — Dorianne Laux Copy Share Image
We aren't suggesting that mental instability or unhappiness makes one a better poet, or a poet at all; and contrary to the… — Dorianne Laux Copy Share Image
The changes that have occurred in poetry have been minor when you look at it over the scale of human time. It's… — Dorianne Laux Copy Share Image
Poetry is an intimate act. It's about bringing forth something that's inside you--whether it is a memory, a philosophical idea, a deep… — Dorianne Laux Copy Share Image
It's difficult to talk about [W.S.] Merwin's poems, as it's hard to talk about a feeling or a smell. It is what… — Dorianne Laux Copy Share Image
Writing and reading are the only ways to find your voice. It won't magically burst forth in your poems the next time… — Dorianne Laux Copy Share Image
And I saw it didn't matter who had loved me or who I loved. I was alone. The black oily asphalt, the… — Dorianne Laux Copy Share 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… — Dorianne Laux Copy Share Image
“How many losses does it take to stop a heart, to lay waste to the vocabularies of desire?” — Dorianne Laux Copy Share Image
And I saw it didn't matter who had loved me or who I loved. I was alone. The black oily asphalt, the slick beauty… — Dorianne Laux Copy Share 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… — Dorianne Laux Copy Share Image
I would say my life experiences are my poetry, whether I'm writing about those actual, factual experiences or not. — Dorianne Laux Copy Share Image
Good writing works from a simple premise: your experience is not yours alone, but in some sense a metaphor for everyone's. — Dorianne Laux Copy Share 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 Copy Share 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… — Dorianne Laux Copy Share 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… — Dorianne Laux Copy Share 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… — Dorianne Laux Copy Share Image
It's difficult to talk about [W.S.] Merwin's poems, as it's hard to talk about a feeling or a smell. It is what it is,… — Dorianne Laux Copy Share Image
We continue to speak, if only in whispers, to something inside us that longs to be named. — Dorianne Laux Copy Share Image
![“It's difficult to talk about [W.S.] Merwin's poems, as it's hard to talk about a feeling or a smell. It is what it is, but so much so that it overwhelms both sense and the senses. I aspire to something about his work, that imbues his poems, though I'm not sure I could say what that is. A purity…” quote by Dorianne Laux](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/8c1/dorianne-laux-12252_aspire_it-s-difficult-to-talk-about-w-s-merwin_654128.jpg)
