Gerald Stern Quotes

• I feel that my job, as an artist, is to disturb the peace. And to disturb it intellectually, linguistically, politically and literally.

  Gerald Stern

  Jobs, Artist, Feels

  Fuente: therumpus.net

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• Maybe being an artist is a kind of detachment. You're in the cave, you're isolated, you're apart from everything and it's there you can find out what you believe in, or what is - what is the nature of being, as you see it.

  Gerald Stern

  Believe, Artist, Caves

  Fuente: therumpus.net

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• Humor is not funny. Humor is something else. Funny is a joke, sometimes silly. Comedy is deep and connected to tragedy; comedy could be deeper than tragedy, in my view.

  Gerald Stern

  Silly, Views, Tragedy

  Fuente: therumpus.net

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• I've been trying to come to terms with what I am and what I do and what I believe in. And I see that I'm not happy with - well, it's almost as if being a poet is not enough for me. It's too late for me to do more now. I did what I could in a small way. I did it as theater, too, to be honest.

  Gerald Stern

  Believe, Trying, Too Late

  Fuente: therumpus.net

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• Sometimes a person thinks he's attached to one thing and he's really attached to something else.

  Gerald Stern

  Thinking, Sometimes, Persons

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• All of a sudden I understand why I like Aliki Barnstones poems so much. They remind me of the one she has studied most - shall we call her her master - Emily Dickinson. Not in the forms, not, as such, in the music, and not in the references; but in that weird intimacy, that eerie closeness, that absolute confession of soul.... In Barnstone, too, the two worlds are intensely present, and the voice moves back and forth between them. She has the rare art of distance and closeness. It gives her her fine music, her wisdom, her form. She is a fine poet.

  Gerald Stern

  Art, Distance, Moving

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• I will look at the footprints going in and out of the water and dream up a small blue good to talk to.

  Gerald Stern

  Dream, Journey, Hiking

  Gerald Stern (1981). “The red coal: poems”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH)

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• The cave is a dark, shadowy place. It's a place that's very close and yet distant at the same time, and it's a place of revelation and isolation. Your form, your body, your writing is your confinement.

  Gerald Stern

  Writing, Dark, Caves

  Fuente: therumpus.net

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• Political means so many things. We are political willy-nilly. Political poetry is an easy invitation to disaster. But then so is love poetry. But we are a little more patient with bad love poetry.

  Gerald Stern

  Mean, Political, Littles

  Fuente: therumpus.net

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• El acto de escribir en sí no es escandaloso. Y la institución trabaja sutil e insidiosamente sobre ti de tal manera que, aunque parezca que tienes libertad, te conviertes en un siervo. Tu principal problema es que te asciendan a lo siguiente. O que te inviten a un picnic. O conseguir la titularidad. O echar un polvo.

  Gerald Stern

  Writing, Issues, Picnics

  Fuente: therumpus.net

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• There are hundreds of prisons - sexual, political, cultural. But being a prisoner also gives you impetus.

  Gerald Stern

  Giving, Political, Prison

  Fuente: therumpus.net

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• If the Buddhist's job is to be detached, I think that the artist's job is to be both detached and attached.

  Gerald Stern

  Buddhist, Jobs, Artist

  Fuente: therumpus.net

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• Oppressed cultures often envy those which are not, or oppressed individuals do, and sometimes those which - and who - are not envy those which - who - are.

  Gerald Stern

  Envy, Culture, Sometimes

  Fuente: therumpus.net

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• If you don't have a bed, or a dresser or a wall, or a book or a toy you are oppressed. An African American in a white world. A Jew in a Christian world. A gypsy. A Native American. A Chinese American. Let's say, you were born deprived.

  Gerald Stern

  Christian, Wall, Book

  Fuente: therumpus.net

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• For the Christian mystics, detachment meant to leave attachment so that God could enter you and take over completely and you could climb the ladder to their heaven. Kind of crazy, but what the hell?

  Gerald Stern

  Christian, Crazy, Attachment

  Fuente: therumpus.net

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• The artist looks for a subject. You know, a lot of new poets don't seem to have a subject. I don't totally understand that.

  Gerald Stern

  Artist, Looks, Poet

  Fuente: therumpus.net

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• I have left out what I don't remember or don't know. Temperament, fear, shyness, obedience, kindness.

  Gerald Stern

  Kindness, Remember, Shyness

  Fuente: therumpus.net

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• You could be attached to merely a description of a plant or a flower. Or a narrative of an event. Or rage at injustice. Isaiah and the other Hebrew prophets, in their rage, were being altogether attached - not at all detached, although as I think of the word "detachment," I also think of a sheet of paper, loose from its notebook, fluttering around somewhere in the wind trying to find its home again.

  Gerald Stern

  Notebook, Flower, Home

  Fuente: therumpus.net

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• In America it's a particular problem. The artist, particularly the poet, is just unacknowledged; if I can use that dumb word. Maybe it has always been that way. Maybe the only way he or she can be acknowledged is to be connected with some movement, be it religious or political.

  Gerald Stern

  Religious, Artist, America

  Fuente: therumpus.net

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• Tolstoy is one of the greatest artists in history, but he finally became infused with the idea of the uselessness of art. He gave himself to his own kind of religion.

  Gerald Stern

  Art, Ideas, Kind

  Fuente: therumpus.net

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• Bruce Smith is a tender master of music, and beautiful lines, and complex thoughts, and fascinating wild personal and cultural references.

  Gerald Stern

  Beautiful, Lines, Masters

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• Men aren't called pricks, but women are called cunts.

  Gerald Stern

  Hombres

  Fuente: therumpus.net

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• It's a kind of liberation to break free in language, if you can break free, but it's also a confinement, because form confines you - whatever the form.

  Gerald Stern

  Language, Kind, Break

  Fuente: therumpus.net

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• Attachment has to do with suffering, so it's really close to Buddhism, because Buddhism wants to relieve you from suffering; you're supposed to escape from suffering.

  Gerald Stern

  Buddhism, Attachment, Suffering

  Fuente: therumpus.net

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• He cambiado a lo largo de mi vida de escritor. Si puedo generalizar, diría que los poemas más recientes -lo crean o no- son más marcadamente políticos; aunque, si los poemas anteriores eran más existenciales, seguían siendo políticos; aunque, a su manera, tenían una presencia complicada.

  Gerald Stern

  Believe, Writing, Political

  Fuente: therumpus.net

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