In Posse Review and 10 Ars Poetica quotes

Wheeeeee!! Issue 23 of In Posse Review is now online with body poems by Kelli Russell Agodon, Kevin Minh Allen, Ivy Alvarez, Lana Hechtman Ayers, Brendan Babish, Stephanie Berger, Edward Byrne, Jeff Crandall, Jehanne Dubrow, Justin Evans, Jeannine Hall Gailey, Bob Guter, Kathryn Hunt, Donald Illich, Wayne Johns, Collin Kelley, Jared Leising, James Lineberger, Michael Lynch, CR Manley, Gary L. McDowell, Amy NewmanMartha Silano, Sarah Sloat, David Trame, Gary Winans and the AA battery. Quite excited to see a lot of familiar names on the roster and just plain delighted to be part of this issue — it's simply exquisite.

10 Ars Poetica quotes tag:

Kate tagged me into listing 10 favorite quotes pertaining to poetry and the writing of it. These ones, I find, reflect my experience —

The solitude of writing is also quite frightening. It's quite close to madness, one just disappears for a day and loses touch.
             — Nadine Gordimer

                         • • • • • •

I am trying to invent a new way of moving under my dress....
             — C.D. Wright, "Crescent" (from Tremble)

                         • • • • • •

Poetry is not the most important thing in life... I'd much rather lie in a hot bath reading Agatha Christie and sucking sweets.
             — Dylan Thomas

                         • • • • • •

I want many hands, hands that have come and gone,
hands that no longer exist except in cutting short a life line.

I would like to say I just want one hand — to name it my own.

But it's so dark in this doorway and so full of infinity.

             — Ada Limon, "Thirteen Feral Cats" (from Lucky Wreck)

                         • • • • • •

Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins commited in previous lives.
             — James Joyce, in a letter (5 September 1918)

                         • • • • • •

Failure concentrates the mind wonderfully. If you don't make mistakes you're not trying hard enough.
             — Jasper Fforde, The Well of Lost Plots

                         • • • • • •

Writing is a lot like sex. At first you do it because you like it. Then you find yourself doing it with a few close friends and people you like. But if you're any good at all... you end up doing it for money.
             — Anonymous, from the internet

                         • • • • • •

I must hurry or I will lose these poems.
Why did I make such a mess of my life?

I am Robinson Crusoe saving things
From the wreck,

Except there isn't any wreck
Nor any island,

Only my unhappiness with all the words
That have to do with 'thinking'.

             — Robert Rehder, "The Symphony" (from The Compromises Will Be Different)

                         • • • • • •

I never drink while I'm working, but after a few glasses I get ideas that would never have occurred to me dead sober.
             — Irwin Shaw, The Paris Review (1979)

And last, probably nonsensical, but which tickles the hell out of me is:

Some men love ruled paper, because they can write athwart the lines, and some take the fly-leaves of their friends' books. But whosoever writes on cheap sermon paper full of hairs should write far away from the woman he loves....
             — H.G. Wells, Certain Personal Matters

I'm tagging Old Nick, Sharon, Ivy, Rachel and Jude.