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Don__ write with a pen. Ink tends to give the impression the words shouldn__ be changed.Write with what gives you the most sensual satisfaction.Write in a hard-covered notebook with green lined pages. Green is easy on the eyes. Blank white pages seems to challenge you to create the world before you start writing. It may be true that you, the modern poet, must make the world as you go, but why be reminded of it before you even have one word on the page?Don__ erase. Cross out rapidly and violently, never with slow consideration if you can help it.Start, as some smarty once said, in the middle of things.Play with syntax.Never want to say anything so strongly that you have to give up the option of finding something better _ if you have to say it, you will.Read your poem aloud many times. If you don__ enjoy it every time, something may be wrong.If you ask a question, don__ answer it, or answer a question not asked, or defer. (If you can answer the question, to ask it is to waste time).Maximum sentence length: seventeen words.Minimum: One.Don__ be afraid to take emotional possession of words. If you don__ love a few words enough to own them, you will have to be very clever to write a good poem.
Richard Hugo The Triggering Town: Lectures and Essays on Poetry and Writing
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Don__ write with a pen. Ink tends to give the impression the words shouldn__ be changed.Write with what gives you the most sensual satisfaction.Write in a hard-covered notebook with green lined pages. Green is easy on the eyes. Blank white pages seems to challenge you to create the world before you start writing. It may be true that you, the modern poet, must make the world as you go, but why be reminded of it before you even have one word on the page?Don__ erase. Cross out rapidly and violently, never with slow consideration if you can help it.Start, as some smarty once said, in the middle of things.Play with syntax.Never want to say anything so strongly that you have to give up the option of finding something better _ if you have to say it, you will.Read your poem aloud many times. If you don__ enjoy it every time, something may be wrong.If you ask a question, don__ answer it, or answer a question not asked, or defer. (If you can answer the question, to ask it is to waste time).Maximum sentence length: seventeen words.Minimum: One.Don__ be afraid to take emotional possession of words. If you don__ love a few words enough to own them, you will have to be very clever to write a good poem.
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Richard Hugo

The Triggering Town: Lectures and Essays on Poetry and Writing

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You know what I love? The spaces between I love you. The tap of your fork against the plate and how my cup of wine clicks against our table. The scratchy voice coming from the radio in the other room. The quiet sound of your hand reaching across the table and whispering over mine. How your voice sounds like your mouth on the back of my neck. The soft murmur of our easy conversation.Between these quiet Tuesday night routines, following every comma and right after every pause for breath, is I, love, and you. In the middle of every I love you is a sink full of dishes, whisper of socked feet tangled in white sheets, and gentle kisses against curved cheeks. We lyric ourselves into the laundry that needs to be finished, into the ends of every smile that follows me repeating your name. We write ourselves into the grocery bags we need to carry, the cracks running up our rented walls, the sides of the bed we choose to drag up the sails of heavy eyed dreams.Like the spaces between our fingers, in the spaces between I, love, and you, we wait.The in-betweens have always been my favorite.

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