From Stuart Dybek: "I thought of the short prose form whether it was called a prose poem or a vignette or whatever (the term flash was yet to be coined) as a little laboratory for messing around with prose rhythm."
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From Sindiwe Magona: "I do believe that writing is always about self. Because even when you propose to write something that is not self, you are still tapping into who you are."
From Andre Dubus III: "It really felt like rediscovering the fragments. So, that’s my advice. Just write the fragment. Make that fragment as whole as you can, because, guess what? It’s going to open the door to another one, and another one, and another one."
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"I think for most poets, a poem “decides” on its own form, once it’s started, and that is equally true for poems in open form as for those that are metrical or syllabic." —Marilyn Hacker
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"Language has its own rules. Readers have their own desires. Poetry is not going to give you a break on any of this." —Kate Daniels
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From Mark Jarman: "I suppose a painting, a hummingbird, a kestrel, or a cormorant, as I approached any of them, is an object for meditation and an occasion for making a poem that will put the meditation into words."
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"I would say that writing gives me the greatest pleasure of anything in life, that writing is what is fulfilling for me; there is nothing else in life like it when it is happening, and that when it is happening it is just a matter of stepping aside."
—William Gay
"I’ve always kept one foot out of the academy. This has always been a conscious act on my part. Physically, spiritually, mentally, emotionally. I refuse to let the academy have me in any kind of whole way."
—Nikky Finney
Special Issue: Works from South Africa guest edited by Kobus Moolmin & Renee Schatteman.
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