I wrote the poems in Charms Against Lightning one by one, over almost a decade, and I did … - James Arthur

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Too caught up in me to see, I'm holding a fortune that heaven has given to me. I'll try and show you each and every way I can, now and forever, I will be your man.

James Arthur

I wrote the poems in Charms Against Lightning one by one, over almost a decade, and I did not write them toward any theme or narrative. But once I really got serious about putting together a book, I began to see that in fact there were themes across the poems, if only because my own obsessions had brought me back time and again to the same ground. I realized that any ordering of the poems would determine how those themes developed over the manuscript, and how the collection's dramatic conflicts were resolved.

Book, Brought, Dramatic, Together, Toward, Writing

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When I'm most deeply involved in my writing, sometimes I do dream about poetry, and occasionally I wake up from a dream with a phrase that I like well enough to put it in a poem.

Dream, Like, Poem, Wake, Wake Up, Writing

If art doesn't require an audience, can an intimate conversation be a work of art? Can a thought be a work of art? Maybe. I don't know. These questions are completely hypothetical for me, because I love interacting with audiences. I want my poems to be heard.

Art, Conversation, Intimate Conversation, Love, Questions, Want

I don't think I'd ever get any better as a poet if I didn't push myself, very deliberately, to grow. My best poems surprise me, as they should, but I fight them at every turn, possibly just because I'm stubborn.

Fighting, Grow, Poems, Stubborn, Thinking, Turn

Our analytical faculties allow us to look critically at our writing and interpret it. Sometimes we make bold, impulsive edits to our poems, but most forms of precision and economy in poetry, it seems to me, are signatures of the analytical mind.

Allow, Faculties, Forms, Mind, Signatures, Writing

It makes sense to me that the polyglot wouldn't know what language he dreamed in.

Dreamed, Language, Make Sense, Polyglot, Polyglots