Pastoral Resources

I consider my films to be poems that are all as personal as my writing and as hand-made.

Only truthful hands write true poems. I cannot see any basic difference between a handshake and a poem.

Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pocket. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.

If I were brave enough to say so, I'd like to think that I had written some poems that people are not going to forget.

The reason one writes poems is so that your poem will be remembered.

I would like to be proud of having written some poems that will be remembered, but I will never know whether I will have any reason to be proud of that.

I like poems that are little games.

I like poems that are complex.

For instance, it's a little better now than it was two or three years ago, but something like 70% of the poems I receive seem to be written in the present indicative.

Every so often I find some poems that are too good for the readers of The Atlantic because they are a little too involved with the nature of poetry, as such.

I have also written some poems which have not been collected in a volume.

My favorite poets may not be your bread and butter. I have more favorite poems than favorite poets.

It is commonly asserted and accepted that Paradise Lost is among the two or three greatest English poems; it may justly be taken as the type of supreme poetic achievement in our literature.

I still read Donne, particularly his love poems.

I have learned so much from working with other poets, travelling and reading with them, spending days discussing poems in progress. There is the sense that we are all, as writers, part of something which is more powerful than any of us.

However, I began to submit poems to British magazines, and some were accepted. It was a great moment to see my first poems published. It felt like entering a tradition.

My first collection of poems was published by Bloodaxe Books, which was then a very new imprint.

I've always thought my poems told stories.

It's easy to understand why the most beautiful poems about England in the spring were written by poets living in Italy at the time.

Poems in a way are spells against death. They are milestones, to see where you were then from where you are now. To perpetuate your feelings, to establish them. If you have in any way touched the central heart of mankind's feelings, you'll survive.