Robert Pinsky - Poetry Quotes

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Poetry is the most bodliy of arts, the medium of poetry is the column of breath rising from the diaphragm in the individual's chest to be shaped into meaning sounds inside the mouth of whoever undertakes to say the poem.

Robert Pinsky

It is the nature of poetry to emphasize that the physical sounds of words come from a particular body, one at a time, in a particular order.

Robert Pinsky

Poetry is a vocal art for me, not neccessarily performative, it might be reading to one self or recalling some lines by memory. The speaker bringing their own experience to it, changing it with their own sensibility.

Robert Pinsky

An underestimated element in poetry, that reading aloud makes clear, is the pause. I mean especially the force of a pause or a couple of pauses close together, contrasted with a longer unit of grammar.

Robert Pinsky

The poetry I love is written with someone's voice and I believe its proper culmination is to be read with someone's voice. And the human voice in that sense is not electronically reproduced or amplified.

Robert Pinsky

I am very interested in memorization which is the process of incorporating a poem, so, I would say the kind of poetry I write is the kind that emphasises the physical qualities of the words.

Robert Pinsky