American - Poet | January 20, 1950 -
I've been fascinated over the years by the way refrains work. Think, say, of the refrains in Yeats' ballads. Ideally, each time the refrain comes back in a poem, it is both the same and different. It works by counterpoint and reiteration. It accrues meaning.
Edward Hirsch
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Poetry takes place in time. It is a durational. Things take place in sequence.
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'Liberty Brass' is a small machine that unfolds in a single unpunctuated wave, which is interrupted by the rotating sign, the refrain. Each part is meant to do its work in relentless progression.
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The Portuguese and Galician term 'saudade' suggests a profoundly bittersweet nostalgia.
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Once your poems are completed, you send them into the world. You don't write for a coterie of other writers - you write for other human beings.
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Fresh or changing conditions ferment fresh forms.
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