You have to learn a few things, which you do along the way, but basically, poetry is a matter of the ear. Iambic pentameters or what constitutes a stanza comes naturally – your ears will know.
VIKRAM SETHRevision has its own peculiar pleasures and its own peculiar frustrations. The ground rules are already established; the characters already exist. You don’t have to bring the characters to life, but you do have to make them more convincing.
More Vikram Seth Quotes
-
-
I just love music – by no stretch of the imagination am I professionally competent.
VIKRAM SETH -
I don’t think people give Indian society enough credit. We may not like to talk much about things but we do, basically, want to live and let live.
VIKRAM SETH -
Those books of mine that are remunerative – I’m not talking about poetry here – take years to write, and I am never sure they’ll be successful. So writing is a risk in more senses than one.
VIKRAM SETH -
Is it not love that knows how to make smooth things rough and rough things smooth?
VIKRAM SETH -
Think of many things. Never place your happiness in one person’s power. Be just to yourself.
VIKRAM SETH -
You get your inspiration – suggestions – wherever you have to, even from your mother.
VIKRAM SETH -
Man without life companion is either god or beast.
VIKRAM SETH -
I have a reputation for being hermitlike. I’m not. I’m just obsessed with my work.
VIKRAM SETH -
God save us from people who mean well.
VIKRAM SETH -
I need my natural laziness to be counteracted by obsession in order to do anything.
VIKRAM SETH -
I think goodness is about how person behaves to person, and also person to world, to nature.
VIKRAM SETH -
Put your backbone where your wishbone is.
VIKRAM SETH -
Good books get praised, bad books get praised. Good books get ignored, bad books get ignored.
VIKRAM SETH -
I rarely listen to music while writing. If I don’t like it, it bothers me, and if I like it, it absorbs me so much I can’t write.
VIKRAM SETH -
I spent many years of my life as an economist and demographer. I was finally distracted by writing my novels and poetry. I’m enormously happy that was the case. I feel that with writing I have found my metier.
VIKRAM SETH