All poetry is an ordered voice, one which tries to tell you about a vision in the unvisionary language of farm, city and love.
– Paul Engle
But maybe it's up in the hills under the leaves or in a ditch somewhere. Maybe it's never found. But what you find, whatever you find, is always only part of the missing, and writing is the way the poet finds out what it is he found.
– Paul Engle
Poetry is ordinary language raised to the Nth power. Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words.
– Paul Engle
Verse is not written, it is bled; Out of the poet's abstract head. Words drip the poem on the page; Out of his grief, delight and rage.
– Paul Engle
Wisdom is knowing when you can't be wise.
– Paul Engle
Writing is like this-you dredge for the poem's meaning the way police dredge for a body. They think it is down there under the black water, they work the grappling hooks back and forth.
– Paul Engle
The sharpest memory of our old-fashioned Christmas eve is my mother's hand making sure I was settled in bed.