James Laughlin

Every now and then, I strike something that just goes click, you know, in my head. As Gertrude Stein used to say, it rings the bell, and I feel, this is great. ↗

— James Laughlin

#click #every #feel #gertrude #gertrude stein

I do read everything that we publish. We usually have to have two or three votes for a book before we take it on. So in that sense I suppose it is an orchestra. ↗

— James Laughlin

#book #everything #i #i do #orchestra

I think one ages and one dates. I tend to have a good deal of difficulty in liking some of the new poets. ↗

— James Laughlin

#dates #deal #difficulty #good #good deal

I think that concrete poetry seems to have, as far as I can see, come to a kind of a dead end. It doesn't seem to be going any further than it went in its high period of about five or six years ago. ↗

— James Laughlin

#ago #any #as far as #come #concrete

I think there's no excuse for the American poetry reader not knowing a good deal about what is going on in the rest of the world. ↗

— James Laughlin

#american #deal #excuse #going #good

It's all well and good to say that Germans were all responsible for the concentration camps, but I don't think they were. I think that was the work of a small group of fiends. ↗

— James Laughlin

#concentration #fiends #germans #good #group

Often something comes in from which you can see that the person is good, the book may not be perfect as it is, and the person doesn't want to do a re-write. That's something we do almost nothing of. ↗

— James Laughlin

#book #comes #good #may #nothing

We do very little re-writing in the office. We often take on people who show great promise and who we hope will develop into somebody important and someone good. ↗

— James Laughlin

#good #great #hope #important #into

We don't attempt to have any theme for a number of the anthology, or to have any particular sequence. We just put in things that we like, and then we try to alternate the prose and the poetry. ↗

— James Laughlin

#anthology #any #attempt #just #like

With me it's the whole thing, it's the conceit, the idea, what the poem is saying. And it goes on just as long as is necessary to say what needs to be said. ↗

— James Laughlin

#goes #idea #just #long #me