I feel deep gratitude for the life poetry has allowed me to live. I know the life I could have lived without it. Both on the physical plain, and the soul plain. Poetry helps us endure.
Dorianne LauxWe aren't suggesting that mental instability or unhappiness makes one a better poet, or a poet at all; and contrary to the romantic notion of the artist suffering for his or her work, we think these writers achieved brilliance in spite of their suffering, not because of it.
Dorianne LauxGood writing works from a simple premise: your experience is not yours alone, but in some sense a metaphor for everyone's.
Dorianne LauxA poem is like a child; at some point we have to let it go and trust that it will make its own way in the world.
Dorianne LauxI write to invite the voices in, to watch the angel wrestle, to feel the devil gather on its haunches and rise. I write to hear myself breathing. I write to be doing something while I wait to be called to my appointment with death. I write to be done writing. I write because writing is fun.
Dorianne Laux