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Alice Oswald Quotes


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Quotes by Alice Oswald

Showing 31-38 of 38 Quotes by Alice Oswald

Topsoil is a place of digestion. It sucks and chews things into smaller pieces. When it's hungry, it turns grey and stony; when it's thirsty, it opens thousands of cracked lips. Subsoil is more skeletal: it doesn't digest.

~Alice Oswald

Topics: Cracked Digest Digestion Grey Hungry Lips More Opens Pieces Place Smaller Sucks Things Thirsty Thousands Turns

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It's the stickiness of earth that makes it problematic - the way it stains your straps and ingrains your hands so you can't quite tell where you start and stop.

~Alice Oswald

Topics: Earth Hands Makes Problematic Quite Start Stop Tell Way Where You Your

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Wind ought to be a verb or an adverb. It isn't really anything. It's a manner of movement of warmth and cold: a kind of information system of the air.

~Alice Oswald

Topics: Air Anything Cold Information Kind Manner Movement Ought Really System Verb Warmth Wind

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When I was 16, I was taught by a wonderful teacher who let me ignore the Greek syllabus and just read Homer.

~Alice Oswald

Topics: Greek Homer Ignore Just Me Read Taught Teacher Who Wonderful

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One of the rules of Greek lament poetry is that it mustn't mention the dead by name in case of invoking a ghost. Maybe the 'Iliad,' crowded with names, is more than a poem. Maybe it's a dangerous piece of the brightness of both this world and the next.

~Alice Oswald

Topics: Both Brightness Case Crowded Dangerous Dead Ghost Greek Iliad Lament Maybe Mention More Name Names Next Piece Poem Poetry Rules Than World

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I think it's often assumed that the role of poetry is to comfort, but for me, poetry is the great unsettler. It questions the established order of the mind. It is radical, by which I don't mean that it is either leftwing or rightwing, but that it works at the roots of thinking.

~Alice Oswald

Topics: Assumed Comfort Either Established Great Me Mean Mind Often Order Poetry Questions Radical Role Roots Think Thinking Which Works I Think

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There are times when the voice of repining is completely drowned out by various louder voices: the voice of government, the voice of taste, the voice of celebrity, the voice of the real world, the voice of fear and force, the voice of gossip.

~Alice Oswald

Topics: Celebrity Drowned Fear Force Gossip Government Louder Out Real Real World Taste The Real World Times Various Voice Voices World

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That is the best instruction you could ever give a poet: whether you're examining a bad line in a poem or a bad motive for action, keep well your repining - meaning, don't ignore the honest muttering in your head.

~Alice Oswald

Topics: Action Bad Best Could Ever Examining Give Head Honest Ignore Instruction Keep Line Meaning Motive Poem Poet Well Whether You Your

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Biography

Nationality: British

Type: Poet

Born: Unknown

Links

Find Alice Oswald on Amazon

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