13 Quotes by Marvin Bell

The war to preserve the privilege of mythmaking

Poetry is the least imposition on silence in a world of chatter.

Learn the rules, break the rules, make up new rules, break the new rules.

I’m partial to coffee shops, brain work, and poems on the page. I write after midnight. Sometimes, twisty syntax happens, and I surrender.

Our job is to become more and more of what we are. The growth of a poet seems to be related to his or her becoming less and less embarrassed about more and more.

Much of our lives involves the word “no.” In school we are mostly told, “Don’t do it this way. Do it that way.” But art is the big yes. In art, you get a chance to make something where there was nothing.

A nation’s art is the expression of its soul.

The “I” in the poem is not you but someone who knows a lot about you.

Sometimes the best revision of a poem is a new poem.