Paul Engle

Poetry is ordinary language raised to the Nth power.

— Paul Engle

Corncobs are the greatest fire-making tinder.

— Paul Engle

Poetry is ordinary language raised to the "N th" power.

— Paul Engle

I had been warned about Jews by my gentile friends - they did terrible things with knives to boys.

— Paul Engle

Every Christmas should begin with the sound of bells, and when I was a child mine always did. But they were sleigh…

— Paul Engle

Writing is rewriting what you have rewritten.

— Paul Engle

I wanted to write poetry almost a little more than I wanted to eat.

— Paul Engle

When I took over the Writers' Workshop, it was one little class and there were eight students. All of them, brilliantly untalented...…

— Paul Engle

I grew up in the prolonged survival of the great age of the horse, with harness and saddle and sleigh bells and…

— Paul Engle

Soldiers of the American Revolution fought that 18th century war with heavy muskets. In the early 20th century, we kids fought it…

— Paul Engle

The years rolled their brutal course down the hill of time. Still poor, my clothes still smelling of the horse barn, still…

— Paul Engle

Without vision you don't see, and without practicality the bills don't get paid.

— Paul Engle

Contrary to slanderous Eastern opinion, much of Iowa is not flat, but rolling hills country with a lot of timber, a handsome…

— Paul Engle

The sharpest memory of our old-fashioned Christmas eve is my mother's hand making sure I was settled in bed.

— Paul Engle

Human life is too difficult for people.

— Paul Engle

I have lectured at Town Hall N.Y., The Library of Congress, Harvard, Yale, Amherst, Wellesley, Columbia, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Louisiana State University,…

— Paul Engle

All families had their special Christmas food. Ours was called Dutch Bread, made from a dough halfway between bread and cake, stuffed…

— Paul Engle

Touch was important. The evening of the Third of July we would go around the neighborhood and look at the fireworks others…

— Paul Engle

I began to write poetry in high school, and would ride miles over sandy roads in the fine hills around Cedar Rapids,…

— Paul Engle

The corncob was the central object of my life. My father was a horse handler, first trotting and pacing horses, then coach…

— Paul Engle

You come to know the aches and vanities and tastes and intrigues of an entire neighborhood at a drug store.

— Paul Engle

I knew about holiness, never having missed a Sunday-school class since I started at four years. But if Jews were also religious,…

— Paul Engle

Has the painter not always gone to an art school, or at least to an established master, for instruction? And the composer,…

— Paul Engle

But maybe it's up the hills or under the leaves or in a ditch somewhere. Maybe it's never found. But what you…

— Paul Engle

The way to praise a poet is to write a poem.

— Paul Engle