31 Quotes by Gerald Stern

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.

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.

Some poems are art because of their passion.

I’ve changed over my writing life. If I can generalize, I would say that the more recent poems – believe it or not – are more pointedly political; although, if the earlier poems were more existential, they were still political; though, in their own way, had a complicated presence.

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

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.

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.

I’ve spent hundreds of hours working over words, and part of me, a large part of me, has a desire to do something else.

Oppressed persons, oppressed cultures, tend to be more political, obviously, as are those with a rage for justice, or the crazy messianic desire.