12+ Dawn Lundy Martin Quotes On Marriage, Lessons

Dawn Lundy Martin is an American poet, essayist, and professor. She is the author of four books of poetry, including Life in a Box is a Pretty Life, and her work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. She is also the co-editor of the anthology The Fire This Time: Young Activists and the New Feminism. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Dawn Lundy Martin on love, life, leadership.

The precise laziness is akin to letting your eyes blur or glimpsing what's at the corners in peripheral vision. Or those moments when you think you see something but you're not sure you actually saw it in the end. The way I get to these places is just practice, like a kind of meditation that shapes my brain. — Dawn Lundy Martin

When I am writing poetry, I try to make my mind go a little lazy, to not think too much, as a way of opening up the part of the brain that makes poems. If I'm successful in this part of the process I'm often not. If my mind gets too lazy it will linger in familiar boring territory, it's like my mind can stroke the physical world. — Dawn Lundy Martin

I reach readers rather unintentionally, I think, and those readers likely connect with the slant, the off-kilter, the part of the road you can barely see from the well-traveled road. So, when I'm writing, I'm not thinking about audience at all. Instead, I'm trying to see behind those shrubs, down that hidden path. We're the weirdos of the world and there are so many weirdos. — Dawn Lundy Martin

My goals as an artist have nothing to do with speaking to an audience. I love to have a good time, but when it comes to poetry I'm not really interested in writing poetry that seeks to entertain or operate safely within the mainstream and, to be clear, I'm not disparaging the really phenomenal work that does - it's just not my interest as a poet. — Dawn Lundy Martin

With my students I give them lots and lots of guided writing. Part of it is as simple as writing a lot but not toward anything. The mind floats. Then I help them see where the language has heat. If we do this a lot in class, students eventually relax into this writing practice and enjoy it. Even just that - writing pleasure without the anxiety of "audience" or "grade" or "success" - is a kind of impetus toward the unfamiliar. — Dawn Lundy Martin

When my work does speak to audiences, when it creates audiences around it, I feel a little less crazy because what that means is that there are folks out there who are interested in thinking about themselves and the world through a prism. The prism is a labor and there can be a pleasure in labor. — Dawn Lundy Martin

I've long been a fan of Adrian Piper's work. I find her performance pieces moving in their willingness to lean toward the absurd. Yet, there's a social critique in her interaction with people who may or may not have understood that the artist was present. — Dawn Lundy Martin

I once asked Myung Mi Kim where gender is located in her work, and she said simply, "it's everywhere," resisting the notion that gender needs to be overly inscribed into the text with some kind of message. Hers is the kind of work that has most influenced how I make poetry - the idea that we don't need to enclose or nail down gender or race, for that matter. — Dawn Lundy Martin

I'm interested is the oblique as a concept deeply connected to human lived experience, not separate from it. I was listening to an interview with film director Stephen Frears on NPR the other day and he said, "People's lives are never what you think they are," or something like that. Human lives are oblique. It makes sense to me that attending to them in language is as well. — Dawn Lundy Martin

I often feel trapped. I often feel like I'm trying to escape some trap, be it a way of thinking, a compulsion, or a way of life. I believe this persistent feeling comes from childhood traumas that stripped away my power. The effect, though, the resulting persistent desire to stretch out of confinement even when confinement is inevitable, is a gift. — Dawn Lundy Martin

I think the occupation of my poetry is akin to this desire to be many things at once - things that sometimes conflict. Regarding how the quotidian makes its way into the work, it's all of it, in a way. Like, when I'm writing poems, I'm just picking up scraps of whatever is happening around me - a geographical location, a love affair failed, the day the air felt like rope. — Dawn Lundy Martin

Can poetry be a form of social change? I don't know the answer to that. I do think art can have a social impact even if it may be difficult to see the effects of that impact, to assess or measure it. — Dawn Lundy Martin

Life Lessons by Dawn Lundy Martin

1. Dawn Lundy Martin's work emphasizes the importance of understanding and embracing our own unique experiences and identities.
2. Through her writing, she encourages us to be open to the perspectives of others and to recognize the power of our own voices.
3. Her work serves as a reminder that we all have something valuable to contribute to the world, and that we should strive to create a more inclusive and understanding society.