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Do’s and Don’t’s
Tony Bennett said it was Frank Sinatra who told him, "Steal from one person and it's plagiarism. Steal from everybody and it's research."
“Keep a strict eye
on eulogistic &
dyslogistic adjectives,”
Lewis (C.S.) advised
Tynan (Kenneth).
“They shd diagnose
(not merely blame)
& distinguish
(not merely praise).”
“Almost any noun is better
alone than chaperoned
if it is the right noun,
and very few can stand
two adjectives” –Pound
to Parker Tyler, ‘35–
“‘Unsettled dream’
is stronger than
‘unsettled white dream’.”
Precision and economy of language
are virtues this author recommends
when writing poems,
but finds difficult
to put into practice.
“It’s more important,”
Ornette Coleman once said,
“to play the correct
feeling
than the correct note.”
“Some of the time,"
to quote Chuck Close,
“you know you’re cooking;
the rest of the time,
you just do it.”
Or as the handbook
on improvisation
for church organ advises:
"Do not be afraid
of being wrong;
just be afraid of being
uninteresting."
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Mark Pawlak is the author of nine poetry collections and the editor of six anthologies. His latest book is Reconnaissance: New and Selected Poems and Poetic Journals (Hanging Loose). His work has been translated into German, Japanese, Spanish, and Polish. My Deniversity: Knowing Denise Levertov, a memoir, is forthcoming in 2021 from MadHat Press.
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