Stephen Dobyns Quotes & Sayings

Each thing I do, I rush through so I can do something else. In such a way do the days pass
a blend of stock car racing and the never ending building of a gothic cathedral. Through the windows of my speeding car I see all that I love falling away: books unread, jokes untold, landscapes unvisited ... — Stephen Dobyns

You should welcome your ignorance because it enables you to learn. (31) — Stephen Dobyns

Let's say someone has experienced a violent trauma or betrayal: a child has been raped by a parent or has witnessed the destruction of someone he loves or has been so traumatized by the possibility of beatings and punishments that he's afraid to act. If the trauma is great enough, that person's life may become frozen, emotionally frozen even though he still gets up in the morning, is busy all day, and goes to bed at night. But there's this empty space that begins to fill with rage, rage toward everyone - the perpetrator, the people in the world who haven't suffered, even toward himself. (174) — Stephen Dobyns

I can't believe there is a poet who hasn't eagerly put down a word one day, only to erase it the next day deciding it was sheer lunacy. It's part of the process of selection. — Stephen Dobyns

For the past thirty years or so, much American poetry has been marked by an earnestness that rejects the comic. This has nothing to do with seriousness. The comic can be very serious. The trouble with the earnest is that it seeks to be commended. It seeks to be praised for its intention more than for what it is saying. — Stephen Dobyns

A work of art gives testimony to what it is to be a human being. It bears witness, it extracts meaning. A work of art is also the clearest nonphysical way that emotions is communicated from one human being to another. The emotion isn't referred to; it is re-created. The emotion shows us that our most private feelings are in fact shared feelings. And this offer us some relief from our existential isolation.
(p: 10) — Stephen Dobyns

These people you used to see every day, friends or acquaintances, after a while they become as distant as any stranger, people you suddenly recall late at night
you remember something they said or something silly that someone once did. For a few moments they completely occupy your mind; then you forget them again. — Stephen Dobyns

I write poems to find out why I write them — Stephen Dobyns

He thinks of that ocean house and wishes he were back in his former life or that one could take one moment and remain inside it like an egg inside its shell, instead of constantly being hurried into the future by good luck or bad. — Stephen Dobyns

They are asleep. This is the condition they prefer. They are afraid of the world and sleep is a way of dealing with their fear. Someday they will wake. Perhaps something frightful will happen. Indeed, there is no better invitation to the frightful than ignorance - that is, sleep. (29) — Stephen Dobyns

If it weren't for the Chicagos and Detroits and Toledos, the terrible things would spread out across the whole country and make trouble for everybody else. Such places were collectors of badness in the way hospitals were collectors of the sick and damaged. — Stephen Dobyns

I like it to be quiet, and it usually occurs in the morning. There are three or four places in my house where I can write and I like to keep moving around. The moment I find myself falling into a necessary routine, I change it. I'd rather not accumulate superstitions. — Stephen Dobyns

Love doesn't need a reason. Hate needs a reason. — Stephen Dobyns

A poem is a window that hangs between two or more human beings who otherwise live in darkened rooms. — Stephen Dobyns

There are many reasons for violence. This is just something that sometimes happens. We'd see it in treatment centers - the child who'd suffered something awful. Even in the best recovery there'd be a fear that everything would fall apart and they'd become victims again. And their final loyalty was to themselves. They couldn't be forced. They preferred to wreck everything, preferred self-destruction to surrender. (175) — Stephen Dobyns

It was as if pain were a room he had entered and the door had been locked behind him. — Stephen Dobyns

My wife's dying upstairs and I can't do anything about it. I look in her face and I see the memories there. I see how I hurt her and how I said the wrong things and how I got angry and how I wasn't the man she hoped I'd be. I see that in her face and I see she's going to die with that. You think I'm not preoccupied? — Stephen Dobyns

It's peculiar to eat naked, but not crazy. What's crazy is to shoot yourself. You've got to get these things in perspective. — Stephen Dobyns

Many of my poems try to use a comic element to reach a place that isn't comic at all. The comic element works as a surprise. It is unexpected and energizing. — Stephen Dobyns

My poems always begin with a metaphor, but my way into the metaphor may be a word, an image, even a sound. And I rarely know the nature of the metaphor when I begin to write, but there is an attentiveness that a writer develops, a sudden alertness that is much like the feel of a fish brushing against a hook. — Stephen Dobyns

Actions have consequences. Ignorance about the nature of those actions does not free a person from responsibility for the consequences. (28) — Stephen Dobyns

Most women are more into real estate than sex. They want to own you. — Stephen Dobyns

The obsession was gone. We liked each other, even loved each other. And our sex was still good, but the hunger was gone. Either it just wore out or we wore each other out. A passion like that pushes everything else out of its path. You can't be married and have jobs and children and work and write and have something like an emotional bubonic plague. — Stephen Dobyns

One writes a poem when one is so taken up by an emotional concept that one is unable to remain silent. — Stephen Dobyns

Adolescence is a dreadful period. We tend to notice those youngsters who misbehave and call attention to themselves, but there are others, equally miserable, who receive no help simply because they are silent. (41) — Stephen Dobyns

Hesitancy is the surest destroyer of talent. One cannot be timorous and reticent, one must be original and loud. New metaphors, new rhythms, new expressions of emotion can only spring from unhindered gall. Nothing should interfere with that intuition
not the fear of appearing stupid, nor of offending somebody, nor jeopardizing publication, nor being trivial. The intuition must be as unhindered as a karate chop. — Stephen Dobyns

If he could not find beauty, nothing else would be worth finding. — Stephen Dobyns

He was husky, barrel-chested, and my age. The belly was a work in progress. It's the name that was important. He was part-time tough, like I said. Basically he's an accountant and works at a place downtown. He's really dead?" "Well," says Manny, "I didn't check his pulse, but he was in two pieces. — Stephen Dobyns

Like this week." "So you're Carl's replacement?" "I guess you could say that. — Stephen Dobyns

Writing is a job, a craft, and you learn it by trying to write every day and by facing the page with humility and gall. And you have to love to read books, all kinds of books, good books. You are not looking for anything in particular; you are just letting stuff seep in. — Stephen Dobyns

Why are doors more difficult to open
as if some sadness were leaning against them?
Why do windows darken and trees bend
when there is no wind? You call that occasional
roar the roar of a plane and I imagine
a time when I might have believed that. But now the darkness has been going on
for too long, and I have accustomed myself
to the pleasure of thinking that soon
there will be no reason to hold on in this place
where rocks are like water and it's so difficult
to find something solid to hold on to. — Stephen Dobyns

When a philosopher, scientist, or psychologist discusses the discrepancy between the actual and the ideal, he or she attempts to convince us with the tools of discursive thought ... An artist does it differently ... their primary approach is different, even though both groups, if you will, are investigating the actual, the ideal, and the discrepancy in between. — Stephen Dobyns