11+ Dan Chiasson Quotes On Education, Culture

Dan Chiasson is an American poet, critic, and professor. He is the author of four books of poetry, including Natural History and The Afterlife of Objects, and has published widely in magazines such as The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine. He is currently the poetry editor of The New Yorker and a professor of English at Wellesley College. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Dan Chiasson on leadership, education, culture.

I was never trying to be funny. Being funny feels to me like an alternate form of confessionality - that is, a way of dismantling the distance between writer and reader, a way of saying, "come in a little closer." — Dan Chiasson

I feel most myself when I'm reading, but by that I don't mean that I'm most comfortable when I'm reading. I feel most fully a person who's torn between attention and inattention, between loving and hating, between hyper-responsiveness and total dullness. Reading is not a comfortable experience for me. — Dan Chiasson

The issue is that when you're a critic it's hard to tell the difference between the thrill of denouncing and telling the truth. Telling the truth to me feels more often like denouncing than like praising. There are many more concrete advantages in the world for people who praise than for those who denounce. So if you want to tell the truth, oftentimes you're going to err on the side of denouncing. That's just something I have to work on. — Dan Chiasson

If you are made for flight, intended for it, you had better find a pursuer, fast. Otherwise, all that fleeing is going nowhere. — Dan Chiasson

I write to get myself writing. That and read Wallace Stevens' "An Ordinary Evening in New Haven" for the umpteenth time. Certain authors for me, certain books, just by reading a phrase I feel I can write. — Dan Chiasson

One problem with writing on the computer, as I do, is that the page is never really 'blank." It is backed by all this energy or potential energy...one can always check the New York Times, or look at real estate, or investigate some intriguing new person in one's life. The span and space for writing feels like a tunnel under these massive mountains of information. — Dan Chiasson

I seem to thrive by destroying the last thing I did, in a kind of cartoon Nietzsche way. Emerson says in "Experience" something like "every ultimate fact soon becomes the next in a series." The self feels more real when you are destroying things you've made than when you are paying them homage. That's the good news about being self-destructive. The bad news, I feel I don't need to deliver. — Dan Chiasson

The events in America now have the quality of things you would find out about long after the fact, and think: if only we had known. Well, we do know now. But what are we doing? Maybe a poet like Lowell brought America a little nearer to its boiling point. — Dan Chiasson

I do care about the consequences of being negative toward people who are powerful. But I'm more afraid of not being taken seriously as a critic - by editors, by readers. — Dan Chiasson

I treat myself as one of the sources. And, again, I think that’s accurate. One of the poets I read most frequently is myself. I really do. I read my own poems obsessively. — Dan Chiasson

The main thing in poetry criticism is that I have all these opinions, and I love having something to do with them. And I think it's important that people try not to be false. The ideal would be that everybody says everything in print. I don't know that it's that I'm not afraid. — Dan Chiasson

Life Lessons by Dan Chiasson

1. Dan Chiasson's work emphasizes the importance of being present in the moment and savoring life's simple pleasures.
2. His poetry often reflects on the power of nature and how it can help us to reconnect with our inner selves.
3. Through his work, Chiasson encourages us to be mindful of our lives and to appreciate the beauty of the world around us.