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You Can Publish A Poem You Think Is A Very Important Poem, And You Don't Hear A Word From Anyone. [...] You Can Publish A Book Of Poetry By Dropping It Off A Cliff And Waiting To Hear An Echo. Quite Often, You'll Never Hear A Thing. So Doing That, Using Older Work, Puts It In A Context, And That Sort Of Forces The Reader To Realize What Its Importance Is-if It Has Any. Everything Needs A Context. You're Not Going To Recognize A Poet Unless You Have A Context.

-Lawrence Ferlinghetti

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You Can Publish A

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

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You Can Publish A Poem You Think Is A Very Important Poem, And You Don't Hear A Word From Anyone. [...] You Can Publish A Book Of Poetry By Dropping It Off A Cliff And Waiting To Hear An Echo. Quite Often, You'll Never Hear A Thing. So Doing That, Using Older Work, Puts It In A Context, And That Sort Of Forces The Reader To Realize What Its Importance Is-if It Has Any. Everything Needs A Context. You're Not Going To Recognize A Poet Unless You Have A Context.

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If You're Going To Be A Writer You Should Sit Down And Write In The Morning, And Keep It Up All Day, Every Day. Charles Bukowski, No Matter How Drunk He Got The Night Before Or No Matter How Hungover He Was, The Next Morning He Was At His Typewriter. Every Morning. Holidays, Too. He'd Have A Bottle Of Whiskey With Him To Wake Up With, And That's What He Believed. That's The Way You Became A Writer: By Writing. When You Weren't Writing, You Weren't A Writer.

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[in The True Mad North] Of Introspection, Where 'falcons Of The Inner Eye' Dive And Die, Glimpsing In Their Dying Fall, All Life's Memory Of Existence.

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Don't Patronize The Chain Bookstores. Every Time I See Some Author Scheduled To Read And Sign His Books At A Chain Bookstore, I Feel Like Telling Him He's Stabbing The Independent Bookstores In The Back.

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