Kevin Powers Quotes

There Are Definitely Connections Between Poems, But I Wanted Each To Stand On Its Own. I Guess It Goes Back To The Idea Of Trying To Zoom In And Out, And To Modulate, So There Are Different Ways Of Looking At Any Experience For The Reader. Even Having Short Poems And Long Poems - There Has To Be Some Kind Of Variation In The Experience Of Reading As A Whole.

I Know That The Writers I Read And Admire All Have An Influence On My Work, But Trying To Determine To What Degree Any Particular Piece Of Input Changes The Way I Think About Writing Seems Counterproductive.

Poetry And Prose Are Of Equal Importance To Me As A Reader, And There Doesn't Seem To Be Much Difference In My Own Writing.

I've Been Writing Poems And Stories Since I Was About 13.

I Understood That 'the Yellow Birds' Would Be A Peculiar Representation Of The Experience Of Being At War. I Intended It To Be So.

The War Tried To Kill Us In The Spring. As Grass Greened The Plains Of Nineveh And The Weather Warmed, We Patrolled The Low-slung Hills Beyond The Cities And Towns. We Moved Over Them And Through The Tall Grass On Faith, Kneading Paths Into The Windswept Growth Like Pioneers. While We Slept, The War Rubbed Its Thousand Ribs Against The Ground In Prayer.

The Details Of The World In Which We Live Are Always Secondary To The Fact That We Must Live In Them.

I Wanted Something That I Could Look Back On And Say, Yes, You Were Fighting Too, You Burned To Be Alive, And Whatever Failure Or Accident Of Nature Caused You To Be Killed Could Be Explained By Something Other Than The Fact That I'd Missed Your Giving Up.

I Knew That At Least A Few Of The Stars I Saw Were Probably Gone Already, Collapsed Into Nothing. I Felt Like I Was Looking At A Lie. But I Didn't Mind. The World Makes Liars Of Us All.

To Understand The World, One’s Place In It, Is To Be Always At The Risk Of Drowning.

I Think A Lot Of The Guys I Know And A Lot Of People I've Talked To, What They Want Is Very Often What Most People Want, A Kind Of Simple Life, A Livelihood, A Family, People Who Care About Them, People They Can Care About. I Think Vets On The Whole Want The Same Things That Everybody Else Does.

The Male Role Models I Had All Seemed To Have Been In The Military. My Father Served In The Army. My Uncle Was In The Marine Corps. Both Of My Grandfathers Served In Wwii. There Weren't Any Career Soldiers In My Family, But When I Was Young It Seemed Like A Way Of Arriving At Adulthood.