Quote of the Day

The poet is not the maker, but someone able to detect the presence of poetry in the accidental.

—Charles Simić, “Negative Capability and Its Children”

Quote of the Day

I wish to be understood. I learned that as a young man trying to seduce women with my poems. How were they going to fall in love with me if they didn’t understand what the hell I’m talking about?

—Charles Simić

The dictionary rule

Interviewer: Your vocabulary is also striking. I noticed you have a huge open dictionary in the other room. Were you always a reader of dictionaries?

Tate: Yes. But I don’t want to exaggerate. I’ve always had second thoughts when I want to send the reader to a dictionary. Is it worth it for readers to come upon a word they don’t really know? I don’t like to do that.

Interviewer: Instead, you find a word that we all kind of know, but don’t use.

Tate: That’s right. Not a word that you use every day. In fact you may not have ever used the word. But you vaguely know it. That’s the limit. I don’t want to go over that limit too much.

—James Tate, to Charles Simic at The Paris Review