Conflict Resolution

Conflict Resolution

“Dialogue is the most effective way of resolving conflict.”

-Tenzin Gyatso (The 14thDalai Lama)

“The quality of our lives depends not on whether or not we have conflicts, but on how we respond to them.”

-Thomas Crum

“Conflict cannot survive without your participation.”

-Wayne Dyer

“Conflict is inevitable, but combat is optional.”

-Max Lucado

“If I ever have a conflict between art and nature, I let art win.”

-Robert Bateman

“Creativity comes from a conflict of ideas.”

-Donatella Versace

“Without conflict there is no plot, witout hope there is no story.”

-Cassandra Clare

“Fortunately analysis is not the only way to resolve inner conflicts. Life itself still remains a very effective therapist.”

-Karen Horney

“Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.”

-Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Boredom is the inner conflict we suffer when we lose desire, when we lack a lacking.”

-Robert McKee

“Whenever you’re in conflict with someone, there is one factor that can make the difference between damaging your relationship and deepening it. That factor is attitude.”

-William James

Robert Frost wrote, “No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.” We come to the page with something we need to work through. We have to work through it in real time for the reader to comprehend our intention. We have to dance our way through the poem with just the right amount of hand-holding. You don’t want the reader to lose interest or fall away from the path. You move in many directions at once towards what eventually feels like an inevitable ending. In a workshop, I once asked if an ending had “been earned.” This was pointed out by workshop leader, William Logan, as a very MFA question. Logan’s response? “Just be happy the poem got there.”

William Butler Yeats says, “Out of the quarrel with others we make rhetoric; out of the quarrel with ourselves we make poetry.” We come to the page with a conflict. We leave the page with at least a temporary solution.