Inspirations from Vera Pavlova

In the April 2012 issue of Poetry, there's a great prose piece by Vera Pavlova.  I'm not familiar with her work, but I found much to like in this notebook style prose piece. 

I should stress that I don't agree with everything that she wrote, but I did find much of it intriguing, saying things in ways I hadn't considered before.



Here are some interesting snippets:

"My writing:  hard-boiled.  My life:  scrambled soft."

"Poetry should be written the way adultery is committed:  on the run, on the sly, during the time not accounted for.  And then you come home, as if nothing ever happened."

"Went to bed with an unfinished poem in my mouth and could not kiss."

"Any one of my poems fits on a palm of the hand, and many on a palm of a child's hand."

"Madness is inspiration idling in neutral."

"I live my life moving forward on rails that I lay myself.  Where do I get the rails?  I dismantle the ones I have gone over."

"My diaries are letters from my former self to my future self.  My poems are replies to those letters."

"If poems are children, poetry readings are PTA meetings."

"An ideal poem:  every line of it can serve as a title for a book."