Hayden Carruth > Quotes

“Why speak of the use
of poetry? Poetry
is what uses us.”
― Hayden Carruth, Toward the Distant Islands: New and Selected Poems

“A poem is not an expression, nor
it is an object. Yet it somewhat
partakes of both. What a poem is
Is never to be known, for which I
have learned to be grateful.”
― Hayden Carruth

“On Being Asked to Write a Poem Against the War in Vietnam

Well I have and in fact
more than one and I'll
tell you this too

I wrote one against
Algeria that nightmare
and another against

Korea and another
against the one
I was in

and I don't remember
how many against
the three

when I was a boy
Abyssinia Spain and
Harlan county

and not one
breath was restored
to one

shattered throat
mans womans or childs
not one not

one
but death went on and on
never looking aside

except now and then like a child
with a furtive half-smile
to make sure I was noticing.”
― Hayden Carruth

“The eye has knowledge the mind cannot share”
― Hayden Carruth

“The mind of man, which he did not ask to be given, demands a reason and a meaning--this is its self-defining cause--and yet it finds itself int he midst of a radically meaningless existence. The result: impasse. And nausea.”
― Hayden Carruth, Nausea

“many paths in the forest have chosen me. I go on any.”
― Hayden Carruth, Asphalt Georgics

“For your love given
ask no return, none. To love
you must love to love.”
― Hayden Carruth

“Language
not urged and crammed with love
is nothing, while that which is is everything.”
― Hayden Carruth, Asphalt Georgics

“Indeed poetry is bounded by silence on all sides, is almost defined by silence.

from “Fallacies of Silence”
― Hayden Carruth, Selected Essays

“I'm to have dinner with some people from the bookshop, which is as posh as the motel, at six, then read at seven-thirty. I will have to watch my mouth. Some sarcastic remark about gentrification is almost bound to slip out. Even though the topography is right, this doesn't even look like Vermont. Not a cow in sight, not a single shack held together with staples and Masonite. Where are my people? The ones who used to go to Canada automatically at age 18 and get all their teeth pulled out, a standard right of passage. The ones who believe you can't be an alcoholic if you drink nothing but beer. The ones who know how to roast a haunch of venison with onions and garlic and sage and mustard (and where to find the haunch in July). The ones who buy their clothes at rummage and their cars at the junkyard. The ones who used to be me. Here I am on my balcony with a finger or two of cognac, a cigar, and a laptop computer, wearing my black jeans and my Reeboks. God, it's awful.”
― Hayden Carruth, Letters to Jane

“Beauty was worth
Its every sorrow, mind's fading or World's ending,
As darkness covered the garden that is the earth.”
― Hayden Carruth, The Sleeping Beauty

“Candor seeks its own unforeseeable occasions.”
― Hayden Carruth, Toward the Distant Islands: New and Selected Poems

“Only the poem weeps. — Hayden Carruth, “The Sleeping Beauty,” Collected Longer Poems (Copper Canyon Press November 1, 1993)”
― Hayden Carruth, Collected Longer Poems

“The past is nothing and we are in love with it.”
― Hayden Carruth, Asphalt Georgics

“I've been reading poetry manuscripts for a poetry prize, not as many this time as in the past--I guess the screening process is more stringent than it used to be. But I haven't found a single book I can be enthusiastic about. I wish now I hadn't agreed to do it, because it puts me in a bind: I've already received and cashed the check, and I must choose a winner, I must write a statement about it, I must have my name attached to it. Which means, in effect, I must tell a lie and be a hypocrite. Of course I could write a check and turn down the assignment, late as it is. But that would bother me a lot too, it's not my style. Damn. These manuscripts--anonymous, but equally divided between women and men--are frightfully stylish and clever and Cantabridgian. Anyway to me they are, for all their brilliance, dry as dust, trivial, pretentious, over-refined, and unrewarding. Not the direction in which our poetry should be moving at this point--or at any point.”
― Hayden Carruth, Letters to Jane

“I like that name, that game too, though utterly valueless, the animal in us
just sufficiently domesticated, our venomous
American aggressiveness confined to balls and bats.”
― Hayden Carruth, Asphalt Georgics

“The Brook"

Murmuring of the brook in late
summer darkness, after moonset,
as I lay sleepless on the porch cot.
A music extraordinarily variable.
Each passage of water against its stone
sounding a different pitch and rhythm.
It was an uncivilized music in the
foothills of the mountains, continuing
long beyond the endurance of a human
singer, almost beyond the endurance
of a human listener, syllables
of unknown meaning, notes on an
unknown scale. A few fat yellow
stars above the northern horizon.
Without art, the song was perfectly
artistic. The unmeaning music
and the unknowing listener were one
in the loneliness of those distant
late summer nights in Vermont.
Truly the music meant nothing,
no intimation, which was why
I liked it so much, my brook
murmuring all night in the darkness,
and I meant nothing, and I liked that too.”
― Hayden Carruth, Scrambled Eggs & Whiskey

“I've been reading poetry manuscripts for a poetry prize, not as many this time as in the past--I guess the screening process is more stringent than it used to be. But I haven't found a single book I can be enthusiastic about. I wish now I hadn't agreed to do it, because it puts me in a bind: I've already received and cashed the check, and I must choose a winner, I must write a statement about it, I must have my name attached to it. Which means, in effect, I must tell a lie and be a hypocrite. Of course I could write a check and turn down the assignment, late as it is. But that would bother me a lot too, it's not my style. Damn. These manuscripts--anonymous, buy equally divided between women and me--are frightfully stylish and clever and Cantabridgian. Anyway to me they are, for all their brilliance, dry as dust, trivial, pretentious, over-refined, and unrewarding. Not the direction in which our poetry should be moving at this point--or at any point.”
― Hayden Carruth, Letters to Jane