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Portrait of Sam Hamill

Sam Hamill

(1943–2018) Poet United States

40 quotes in 436 categories

Sam Hamill was a poet from the United States, best known for The Gift of Tongues.

Quick Facts About Sam Hamill

Born: May 9, 1943
Died: April 14, 2018
Nationality: United States
Profession: Poet
Notable works: The Gift of Tongues

About Sam Hamill

Sam Hamill was an American poet and the co-founder of Copper Canyon Press along with Bill O’Daly and Tree Swenson. He also initiated the Poets Against War movement (2003) in response to the Iraq War. In 2003 he did a poetic tour in Italy, organised by writer Alessandro Agostinelli. After that tour Hamill published his first Italian book A Pisan Canto - Un canto pisano.

Biography source: Wikipedia

Awards & Honors

Guggenheim Fellowship PEN Oakland/Censorship Award National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship

Quotes by Sam Hamill · Page 2

I can remember, I think it was 1967, sitting in the First Unitarian Church in Isla Vista, Santa Barbara, and seeing Phil…

Barbara

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It would be nice if all the Republicans could put poetry in a little box and put the box under the bed…

Bed

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I got interested in Zen when I was a teenage beatnik on the streets of San Francisco. And it was my interest…

Asia

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Sometimes people come up and they get infatuated with some little brief imagistic poem or something, and they say, "Oh, I really…

Come up

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We're certainly not perfect, and we're not probably even better than anybody else, except that perhaps we are given to certain kinds…

Balance

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That's one of those questions that would just love to have a pat answer. You know, poetry's job is to make us…

Answers

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What poetry does above all else is develop sensibility. And that's what makes poetry so dangerous. That's why poetry is so good…

Building

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“Don’t tell me about the seasons in the East, don’t talk to me about eternal California summer. It’s enough to have a…

Rain

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All I'd ever heard my entire life in my family was, "Nobody wanted you, and we took you in." When you get…

Age

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Most of the ugly wars in history have been wars of religion. And there's nothing more dangerous than someone with religious certitude…

Certitude

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Poets should speak out against what we see as the assault against our Constitution and the warmongering that's going on. I'm perfectly…

Assault

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I wrote a number of poems about Kah Tai lagoon, when Safeway was building that huge, ugly store down there where I…

Agendas

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Galway Kinnell came out with that wonderful big, breathy, hollow voice of his and read, for the first time in public, "The…

Asking

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Ho Kyuns poetry is in the tradition of his master, the incomparable Tu Fu, while remaining fully his own. Writing nine centuries…

Century

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“I believe the poem is a sacramental act, pure devotion to whatever may be revealed only through the music of intuition. The…

Music

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Sam Hamill by topic

Poetry (27) Poet (13) World (12)