James Broughton

“I had a toy theater and a magic lantern, and when I was eight I built a stage for theatricals in the attic.”

“I consider my films to be poems that are all as personal as my writing and as hand-made.”

“And to Shakespeare I owe my vision of the world as a theater, wherein all humans are acting out their parts.”

“Today the U.S. is farther from being nourished by poetry than it was a hundred years ago, when books of poems were best-sellers.”

“Rarest of the real poets are born poets. They are the oddballs, not the professors.”

“The only limits are, as always, those of vision.”

“My major aim in writing is to set out flags and issue wake-up calls.”

“True delicacy is not a fragile thing.”

“Amazement awaits us at every corner.”

“A born poet knows in his cradle that a poetic life is the only life worth living.”

“The American public does not know poets exist.”

“In the world of poetry there are would-be poets, workshop poets, promising poets, lovesick poets, university poets, and a few real poets.”

“The most astonishing joy is to receive from the muses the gift of a whole lyric.”

“Everything that ever happened is still happening. Past, present and future keep happening in the eternity which is Here and Now.”

“I often start writing in order to excite an expansive emotion.”

“Most poets in their youth begin in adolescent sadness. I find it more rewarding to end in gladness.”

“It was as important to live poetically as to write poems.”

“Everything is Song. Everything is Silence. Since it all turns out to be illusion, perfectly being what it is, having nothing to do with good or bad, you are free to die laughing.”

“For me a poem has to sing out of itself and the lilt of it carries the magic.”