13 Quotes by William Jay Smith

[The Toaster]A silver-scaled dragon with jaws flaming redsits at my elbow and toasts my bread.I hand him fat slices, then one by onehe hands them back when he sees they are done.

It was the enchantment of spoken verse that led me to write for children.

As any parent, teacher, or librarian knows, there is no richer experience than to see children's faces light up at the suspense of a new tale or the surprise of a new poem. The uninhibited joy with which they listen is surely akin to that of adult audiences of old around campfire and hearth.

A fresh and vigorous weed, always renewed and renewing, it will cut its wondrous way through rubbish and rubble.

I have always used a great variety of verse forms, especially in my poetry for children. I believe that poetry begins in childhood and that a poet who can remember his own childhood exactly can, and should, communicate to children.

I have felt at times with groups of children that I was really being what every poet would like to be - a bard in the old sense.

For every artist, experience is never complete until it has been reproduced in creative work.

To the poet, his travels, his adventures, his loves, his indignations are finally resolved in verse, and this, in the end becomes his permanent, indestructible life.

To Tennessee Williams we owe a special debt. In a tragic age, he has transformed loneliness by naming it for us, suffered sordidness with beauty, graced poor hurt lives with love and pity.