James Laughlin
James Laughlin
James Laughlinwas an American poet and literary book publisher who founded New Directions Publishing...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth30 October 1914
CountryUnited States of America
reading thinking differences
I think there is a great difference, in that when the poet is reading you get the whole personality of the person, especially if he's a good reader. Whereas a person just sitting gets what he puts into it.
thinking interesting attention
I think we will always have the impulse towards visual poetry with us, and I wouldn't agree with Bly that it's a bad thing. It depends on the ability of the individual poet to do it well, and to make a shape which is interesting enough to hold your attention.
beautiful wall book
Concrete poets continue to turn out beautiful things, but to me they're more visual than oral, and they almost really belong on the wall rather than in a book. I haven't the least idea of where poetry is going.
thinking groups responsible
It's all well and good to say that Germans were all responsible for the concentration camps, but I don't think they were. I think that was the work of a small group of fiends.
ideas long needs
With me it's the whole thing, it's the conceit, the idea, what the poem is saying. And it goes on just as long as is necessary to say what needs to be said.
gertrude plot needed-someone
[Gertrude Stein] really needed someone like Virgil Thomson, whom she respected, to sit on her a bit and make her devise some plot.
thinking age poet
I think one ages and one dates. I tend to have a good deal of difficulty in liking some of the new poets.
country sound vacuums
I often feel I'm working in a vacuum, or in a country where few readers can hear the sounds.
clear occasions poet relationship sad
Then, of course, there are those sad occasions when a poet or a writer has not grown, and one has to let them go because they're just not making headway. But we have a very clear personal relationship with the authors.
thinking knowing world
I think there's no excuse for the American poetry reader not knowing a good deal about what is going on in the rest of the world.