Elaine Equi Quotes
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I never liked the philosophy that you can have everything and be everything and that something is wrong if you don't want that. I'm terrible at multitasking and find it hard to believe that no one protests this general trend of using the rhetoric of self actualization to sell you faster and faster phones and computers, BlackBerrys, etc.
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To be honest, I wasn't crazy about the kind of poetry I found in high school English books. I didn't get really excited about poetry until I discovered Lorca in college. If it wasn't for surrealism, I'm not sure I'd have become so involved in poetry. I was attracted by the extravagant imagery and elements of fantasy. This was in the '70s and it seemed to fit the psychedelic mood of the times. I found it liberating.
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In the past things were either in your head (subjective, imaginary, fantasy) or else they were part of the outside world - cold, hard, concrete materialistic reality. If you want to look at it in terms of poetry, there was surrealism and objectivism. Now there's the veil of the virtual in between. The old opposition between inner and outer doesn't quite capture it, especially as it contains elements of both. It's real but not concrete.
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I tend to like poems that are short as well as funny. I love Joe Brainard and Aram Saroyan. And I think their sense of humor and minimalist approach are pretty radical.
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There are fewer and fewer philosophies that everyone subscribes to. We don't seem to have as many beliefs in common as we used to. Also, we interact much more online. We have all these gadgets to help us manage different aspects of our lives.
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I don't like speed. I would have made a terrible Futurist. Even when I did take drugs, I never liked amphetamines and much preferred the slow taffy-pull of time that you get with opiates.
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I think poetry workshops get a bad rap. I'm sure some aren't good, but in general, I like the format. I try and keep mine pretty informal. Sometimes we have wine or sake, and we read aloud, and we talk.
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I tend to be a pretty spacey and scattered person, so anything that makes me feel "grounded" comes as a welcome relief.
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The postcard is sacred to me. It makes me sad that no one sends them very much anymore because of email and texting. I still like to buy them, but they've lost their original function and now just seem like reminders or mementos of what they used to be.
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Sometimes you get lit students that know a lot about the canon but virtually nothing about contemporary poetry and vice versa. I like to mix things up.
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When I shut off the verbal, I like to escape into the visual.
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I can appreciate the idea that with e-books more people would publish, the work would be easier to disseminate, and that it could even be interactive. Being a lover of photography, I especially like the idea that you could include lots of pictures - full-color pictures - with your writing. That to me is exciting! We'll all have to stay tuned to see what develops.
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I don't write every day, but if I go more than a couple of months without writing, I begin to get a little nervous. I usually have bursts of poems. Five or six come together and then I slack off and want to do something else.
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I like being married to another writer. You get to trade ideas. You get to talk shop. You get to complain. You get to gossip. And you don't have to explain why you're in such a bad mood when your work isn't going well.
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I have a lot of respect for advertising. If I didn't teach and could go back in time, I might try and become a copywriter. I especially like print ads that combine a photo with a short caption or tag line.
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When I think of someone equating poems and machines, it makes me feel like that person would like poems to have a more obvious use value in society. They're not happy with poetry being this ephemeral, indefinable thing. They want it to be "real."
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I wonder if books become in essence "files" if people wouldn't write them differently. I'm used to writing print books and I enjoy the slowness of the whole process. It makes me more deliberate about everything I say.
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I've always liked language and been a big reader. I always loved books as objects. My favorite time of year as a child was September when we'd go buy all kinds of notebooks and pens and markers for school. I think I wanted to be a writer just so I'd be able to fill up all those pages.
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The earth has always supported me in all my endeavors. I trust it.
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Art is not an object, but a way of looking at an object.
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I like to look at the interface between words and pictures and wonder about which comes first, a sort of chicken-or-egg type of question.
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In order for poetry to exist there has to be not-poetry to contrast it with.
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In Chicago, if you tell someone you're a writer, they look at you suspiciously - as if to say "yeah, right." In New York, people don't question the idea. If you say you're a writer, that's what you are.
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I can never plan out what direction my poems will take in terms of either form or content. I wish I could but it doesn't work that way for me. If I try to write something, I'd probably end up doing the opposite.