#poe

The more film I watch, the more John Ford looks like a giant. His politics aren't so good, and you have to learn to accept John Wayne as an actor, but he's a poet in black and white. ↗

— Jonathan Lethem

#actor #black #black and white #film #ford

Back then, I couldn't have left a poem a year and gone back to it. ↗

— Philip Levine

#gone #i #left #poem #then

But I'm too old to be written about as a young poet. ↗

— Philip Levine

#i #old #poet #too #written

For sure I once thought of myself as the poet who would save the ordinary from oblivion. ↗

— Philip Levine

#myself #oblivion #once #ordinary #poet

I realized poetry's the thing that I can do 'cause I can stick at it and work with tremendous intensity. ↗

— Philip Levine

#i #i can #intensity #poetry #realized

But most commonly, it's one poem that I work on with a lot of intensity. ↗

— Philip Levine

#i #intensity #lot #most #poem

I was very lucky to have a mother who encouraged me to become a poet. ↗

— Philip Levine

#encouraged #i #lucky #me #mother

If that voice that you created that is most alive in the poem isn't carried throughout the whole poem, then I destroy where it's not there, and I reconstruct it so that that voice is the dominant voice in the poem. ↗

— Philip Levine

#carried #created #destroy #dominant #i

Meet some people who care about poetry the way you do. You'll have that readership. Keep going until you know you're doing work that's worthy. And then see what happens. That's my advice. ↗

— Philip Levine

#advice #care #doing #going #happens

My mother carried on and supported us; her ambition had been to write poetry and songs. ↗

— Philip Levine

#been #carried #had #her #mother