Paul Engle quotes

Our small ears never had such a workout as on the Fourth of July, hearing not only our own bursting crackers but also those of our friends, and often the boom of homemade cannon shot off by daring boys of 16 years, ready to lose a hand if it blew up. (Paul Engle)
Without vision you don't see, and without practicality the bills don't get paid.
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
The sharpest memory of our old-fashioned Christmas eve is my mother's hand making sure I was settled in bed.
Paul Engle
The way to praise a poet is to write a poem.
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
I grew up in the prolonged survival of the great age of the horse, with harness and saddle and sleigh bells and horse pictures, not as antiques but the facts of our lives.
Paul Engle
Human life is too difficult for people.
Paul Engle
Contrary to slanderous Eastern opinion, much of Iowa is not flat, but rolling hills country with a lot of timber, a handsome and imaginative landscape, crowded with constant small changes of scene and full of little creeks winding with pools where shiners, crappies and catfish hover.
Paul Engle
I have published in 'The New Yorker,' 'Holiday,' 'Life,' 'Mademoiselle,' 'American Heritage,' 'Horizon,' 'The Ladies Home Journal,' 'The Kenyon Review,' 'The Sewanee Review,' 'Poetry,' 'Botteghe Oscure,' the 'Atlantic Monthly,' 'Harper's.'
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)
For my Oxford degree, I had to translate French and German philosophy (as it turned out, Descartes and Kant) at sight without a dictionary. That meant Germany for my first summer vacation, to learn the thorny language on my own.
Paul Engle
Other families bought automobiles; we had a horse-headed hitching post in front of our house and drove horses.
Paul Engle
When your first marriage goes into tragedy, you become very battle-scarred... I even thought of suicide. Luckily, I had known some happy marriages.
Paul Engle
The years rolled their brutal course down the hill of time. Still poor, my clothes still smelling of the horse barn, still writing those doubtful poems where too much emotion clashed with too many words.
Paul Engle
All families had their special Christmas food. Ours was called Dutch Bread, made from a dough halfway between bread and cake, stuffed with citron and every sort of nut from the farm - hazel, black walnut, hickory, butternut.
Paul Engle
I have lectured at Town Hall N.Y., The Library of Congress, Harvard, Yale, Amherst, Wellesley, Columbia, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Louisiana State University, Colorado, Stanford, and scores of other places.
Paul Engle
All poetry is an ordered voice, one which tries to tell you about a vision in the un-visionary language of farm, city, and love.
Paul Engle
Soldiers of the American Revolution fought that 18th century war with heavy muskets. In the early 20th century, we kids fought it every Fourth of July not only with exploding powder and shimmering flares, but with all of our senses.
Paul Engle
You come to know the aches and vanities and tastes and intrigues of an entire neighborhood at a drug store.
Paul Engle
I wanted to write poetry almost a little more than I wanted to eat. (Paul Engle)
To eat in the same room where food is cooked - that is the way to thank the Lord for His abundance.
Paul Engle
The corncob was the central object of my life. My father was a horse handler, first trotting and pacing horses, then coach horses, then work horses, finally saddle horses. I grew up around, on, and under horses, fed them, shoveled their manure, emptied the mangers of corncobs.
Paul Engle
Corncobs are the greatest fire-making tinder.
Paul Engle
I had been warned about Jews by my gentile friends - they did terrible things with knives to boys.
Paul Engle