Marvin Bell Quotes & Sayings

Poetry is the least imposition on silence in a world of chatter. — Marvin Bell

I'm partial to coffee shops, brain work, and poems on the page. I write after midnight. Sometimes, twisty syntax happens, and I surrender. — Marvin Bell

A nation's art is the expression of its soul. — Marvin Bell

Prose is prose because of what it includes; poetry is poetry because of what it leaves out. — Marvin Bell

Try to write poems at least one person in the room will hate. — Marvin Bell

Our job is to become more and more of what we are. The growth of a poet seems to be related to his or her becoming less and less embarrassed about more and more. — Marvin Bell

The writing of a poem is, for me, in the first place, an almost total act of abandon leading to discovery leading to recognition. — Marvin Bell

Learn the rules, break the rules, make up new rules, break the new rules. — Marvin Bell

I speak to you in one tongue/ but every moment that ever mattered to me/ occurred in another language. — Marvin Bell

Sometimes the best revision of a poem is a new poem. — Marvin Bell

The war to preserve the privilege of mythmaking — Marvin Bell

The "I" in the poem is not you but someone who knows a lot about you. — Marvin Bell

There is a moment when the dead man, too, cancels further revision of the impure.
Thus, the dead man is a postscript to closure.
The dead man is also a form of circular reasoning, the resident tautologist in an oval universe that is robin's-egg-blue to future generations.
Perhaps it's so not important that the dead man lives.
After all, the dead man deserts the future. — Marvin Bell

Much of our lives involves the word 'no.' In school we are mostly told, 'Don't do it this way. Do it that way.' But art is the big yes. In art, you get a chance to make something where there was nothing. — Marvin Bell