At a recent zoom reading/talk, Chinese poet Wang Ping made these comments, which I thought worth sharing:
“Poetry is the bone marrow of language. It forces us to constantly rethink, who am I? Why am I here? What is my past and what is my tomorrow?”
“Poetry does not belong to a few ritics or people who give out awards. It belongs to all of us.”
“Poetry is the ultimatte tool for self-explanation.”
“Poetry erases the borders of time and space.” She has an interest in quantum physics and believes the two disciplines are highly related.
“We put two things together–and the seeming unrelated things become entangled. That is metaphor.”
Her advice to poets: “Break the linear. Break the logic. Go like a spiderweb. Go collage.”
“When we pay attention, when we focus, life becomes a poem. Every budding flower, every blade of grass. — That’s why I love Walt Whitman…. We write poetry. We walk poetry all the time.”