I'm all over my poems, even if their relation to my everyday life is that of dream to reality. — Matthea Harvey Copy Share Image
Poems tend to have instructions for how to read them embedded in their language. — Matthea Harvey Copy Share Image
Poetic success is when you write a poem that makes you excited and bewildered and aglow. — Matthea Harvey Copy Share Image
Having my poems set to music by Eric Moe has completely knocked my socks off. — Matthea Harvey Copy Share Image
Usually form seems to find me in the process of writing a poem, though I have nothing against starting out with the… — Matthea Harvey Copy Share Image
"Confessional poetry" is another one of those labels. It goes in and out of fashion. — Matthea Harvey Copy Share Image
Writing a poem is always a process of subtracting: you start with all of language available to you, and you choose a… — Matthea Harvey Copy Share Image
I think all poetry is accessible in a certain sense if you spend enough time with it. — Matthea Harvey Copy Share Image
As a reader I don't distinguish between confessional and non-confessional work. After all, how do we even know that certain "I" poems… — Matthea Harvey Copy Share Image
I don't like basements, but definitely basements could be poems. Not fond of skin diseases, but again, there's a pattern. Probably anything… — Matthea Harvey Copy Share Image
Some of my favorite poems are "confessional" poems written in the voices of aliens ("Southbound on the Freeway" by May Swenson" and… — Matthea Harvey Copy Share Image
I suppose it's useful in designating writing that tends to come from personal experience, work that delineates an "I," but it's a… — Matthea Harvey Copy Share Image
I have poetic failures all the time. Many failed poems. I try not to publish those, though some have slipped into each… — Matthea Harvey Copy Share Image
I think of poetry as a very inclusive term. Still, it's interesting that people want to make the distinction. I love the… — Matthea Harvey Copy Share Image
I don't see much difference between prose poems and flash fiction (I've often taught the latter as the former), but then I… — Matthea Harvey Copy Share Image
I write poems from dreams pretty frequently. It's limiting to think the poem has to come from a sensical lyric "I" stating… — Matthea Harvey Copy Share Image
There isn't a grand plan at work in the progression of the books with respect to the line. I do want the… — Matthea Harvey Copy Share Image
If I begin a poem, "I am a donkey," reason kicks in and says, "She is taking on the persona of a… — Matthea Harvey Copy Share Image
When I get interested in a new topic I teach a class on it. There's a graduate seminar I teach in which… — Matthea Harvey Copy Share Image
In my own writing, I've mostly abandoned end-rhyme, but wordplay is still a huge part of my process. I've written a series… — Matthea Harvey Copy Share Image
S. E. Smith's I Live in a Hut has a deceptively simple title, considering that the brain in that hut contains galaxies-worth… — Matthea Harvey Copy Share Image
I am pretty interested in hybrid forms. I love graphic novels and I think there should be more graphic poems in the… — Matthea Harvey Copy Share Image
I'm interested in concrete poems - anything that complicates the line between the written and the visual. — Matthea Harvey Copy Share Image
I also like poems that are haunted by a structure or a narrative, or poems that frisk flirtatiously at the boundary of… — Matthea Harvey Copy Share Image
Poems can't help but be personal. Mine are certainly an accurate blueprint of the things I think about, if not a record… — Matthea Harvey Copy Share Image
I don't think all poems need to be written in conversational language - those are often great poems but there should also… — Matthea Harvey Copy Share Image
I do love the prose poem because it's such a perverse and provocative little box - always asking to be questioned, never… — Matthea Harvey Copy Share Image
I don't think that you can say by any stretch of the imagination that all Wisconsin or Brooklyn-based poets write in a… — Matthea Harvey Copy Share Image
I think poetry involves heightened noticing or imagining as well as creating a certain made shape. On the other hand, that shape… — Matthea Harvey Copy Share Image
What I like about prose poems is that they seem to make people uncomfortable - people want to define them, justify them,… — Matthea Harvey Copy Share Image
When I start writing a poem, I can usually know quite early on whether it's a lineated or prose poem, but I… — Matthea Harvey Copy Share Image
A lot of people are writing poems and don't realize it. They have this limited idea of how the poem should sound… — Matthea Harvey Copy Share Image
If you were going to make sculptures of them, the swivel poems would be disparate objects all attached with hinges and the… — Matthea Harvey Copy Share Image
I am charmed by concrete poetry (but it's very hard to do well, I think) and in general by the idea of… — Matthea Harvey Copy Share Image
I don't think that you can say by any stretch of the imagination that all Wisconsin or Brooklyn-based poets write in a particular way.… — Matthea Harvey Copy Share Image
I think poetry involves heightened noticing or imagining as well as creating a certain made shape. On the other hand, that shape can be… — Matthea Harvey Copy Share Image
When I get interested in a new topic I teach a class on it. There's a graduate seminar I teach in which the students… — Matthea Harvey Copy Share Image
"Confessional poetry" is another one of those labels. It goes in and out of fashion. — Matthea Harvey Copy Share Image
I don't think all poems need to be written in conversational language - those are often great poems but there should also be poems… — Matthea Harvey Copy Share Image
When I have my students do erasures, I'm always amazed by the way their voice comes through, whether they're doing an erasure of a… — Matthea Harvey Copy Share Image
Whether you're talking about political borders or aesthetic divisions (and clearly, the political ones have much more tragic consequences), it seems like once they… — Matthea Harvey Copy Share Image
Usually form seems to find me in the process of writing a poem, though I have nothing against starting out with the form. — Matthea Harvey Copy Share Image
I'm pretty lenient with myself about time - if I feel like taking photographs of small things inside ice cubes or making animal collages,… — Matthea Harvey Copy Share Image
Recently, while I was in England, I saw a documentary on the BBC about the border between India and Pakistan at Wagah. When the… — Matthea Harvey Copy Share Image
