Miller Williams Quotations

For something to be useful to the spirit is not very valuable to get your covered wagon across the desert. We have adopted that attitude so thoroughly that any American father whose son tells him he wants to write poetry will be embarrassed.

I always have pen and paper with me.

Jazz is very important. It's not something I can put my finger on. When I'm writing at my favorite time, I like to have the gentle side of Coltrane or Brubeck on the CD player. It creates sort of a spiritual space in which I write best.

I respond to mood. I hear some phrase, or pick up a rhythm.

A thing may fail as a poem because it tries to do what a poem cannot do: it tries to become a treatise on cosmic truth... We can best be exact about the cosmic things - God and truth, beauty, eternity and love - by not talking directly about them.

I like to think that the best poetry is or involves a contest between ordinary conversation and ritual.

I put myself in a spiritual and physical place where I've learned from experience the synapses are likely to fire and the juices are likely to flow, and simply begin to write.

I don't like poetry that doesn't give me a sense of ritual, but I don't like poetry that doesn't sound like people talking to each other. I try to do both at once.

Ritual is important to us as human beings. It ties us to our traditions and our histories.

I manage a toast to the Christmas tree and one to the sweet absurdity in the miracle of the verb to be. Lucky you, lucky me.

You do not know what wars are going on down there where the spirit meets the bone.

Too many poets write poems which are only difficult on the surface, difficult because the dramatic situation is easily misunderstood. It's not difficult to write poems that are misunderstood. A drunk, a three-year-old-they are easily misunderstood. What is difficult is being clear and mysterious at the same time. The dramatic situation needs to be as clear in a poem as it is in a piece of good journalism. The why is part of the mystery, but the who, what, where, and when should all be understood.

Every word you add dilutes the sentence.

Have compassion for everyone you meet, even if they don't want it. What appears bad manners, an ill temper or cynicism is always a sign of things no ears have heard, no eyes have seen. You do not know what wars are going on down there where the spirit meets the bone.