"So I really began as a failed poet - although when I first wanted to be a writer, I learned to write prose by reading poetry."
-Nicholson Baker
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"From my music training, I knew that, some Spanish rhythms apart, 5/4 is a time signature used only in the modern era. Holst's Mars from the Planets is 5/4. But if you speak lines of poetry in that pattern you just end up hitting the off-beats. It's only when you add a rest - a sixth beat - that it sounds as it surely should sound.“
-Nicholson Baker
posted in Poetry
Other Quotes by Nicholson Baker
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"When I really want to be soothed and reminded of why people bother to fiddle with sentences, I often read poetry."
-Nicholson Baker
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"Wikipedia is just an incredible thing. It is fact-encirclingly huge, and it is idiosyncratic, careful, messy, funny, shocking and full of simmering controversies - and it is free, and it is fast."
-Nicholson Baker
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"I think I am done with Wikipedia for the time being. But I have a secret hope. Someone recently proposed a Wikimorgue - a bin of broken dreams where all rejects could still be read, as long as they weren't libelous or otherwise illegal."
-Nicholson Baker
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"How sweet it is!"
-Jackie Gleason
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"We don't believe in rheumatism and true love until after the first attack."
-Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach
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"I write poetry in order to live more fully."
-Judith Rodriguez
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"He fertilizes a phrase or a line of poetry for weeks and then gives birth to it in a speech."
-John Colville
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"Poetry uses the hub of a torque converter for a jello mold."
-Diane Glancy
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"Poetry asks people to have values, form opinions, care about some other part of experience besides making money and being successful on the job."
-Toi Derricotte
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"For there is a sound reasoning upon all flowers. For flowers are peculiarly the poetry of Christ."
-Christopher Smart
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"I don't know a better preparation for life than a love of poetry and a good digestion."
-Zona Gale
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