Quotes by American Authors - Page 3128

It's better to swim in the sea belowThan to swing in the air and feed the crow,Says jolly Ned Teach of Bristol.
Benjamin Franklin
Everything in creation has its appointed painter or poet and remains in bondage like the princess in the fairy tale 'til its appropriate liberator comes to set it free.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I've had it with these cheap sons of bitches who claim they love poetry but never buy a book.
Kenneth Rexroth
We must unlearn the constellations to see the stars.
Jack Gilbert
Love is a shadow. How you lie and cry after it
Sylvia Plath
The exceeding brightness of this early sunMakes me conceive how dark I have become.
Wallace Stevens
I don't want tobecause boysdon't write poetry.Girls do.
Sharon Creech
Through endless night the earth whirls toward a creation unknown...
Henry Miller
For we cannot tarry here,We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger,We, the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend, Pioneers! O pioneers!
Walt Whitman
Sometimes he did not know if he slept or just thought about sleep.
Mark Strand
But writing poems and letters doesn't seem to do much good.
Sylvia Plath
It is not our job to remain whole.We came to lose our leavesLike the trees, and be born again,Drawing up from the great roots.
Robert Bly
Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.
W.H. Auden
if everything happens that can't be done(and anything's righterthan bookscould plan)the stupidest teacher will almost guess(with a runskiparound we go yes)there's nothing as something as oneone hasn't a why or because or although(and buds know betterthan booksdon't grow)one's anything old being everything new(with a whatwhicharound we come who)one's everyanything soso world is a leaf so tree is a bough(and birds sing sweeterthan bookstell how)so here is away and so your is a my(with a downuparound again fly)forever was never till nownow i love you and you love me(and books are shutterthan bookscan be)and deep in the high that does nothing but fall(with a shouteacharound we go all)there's somebody calling who's wewe're anything brighter than even the sun(we're everything greaterthan booksmight mean)we're everanything more than believe(with a spinleapalive we're alive)we're wonderful one times one
E.E. Cummings
It is difficult to write a paradiso when all the superficial indications are that you ought to write an apocalypse.
Ezra Pound
My heart is strong, I will not fail, I won't be wronged, I will prevail.
Alexandra Lanc
Of the many forms that silence takes, the most memorable is the dry husk of the cicada.
Jon Davis
How long your closet held a whiff of you,Long after hangers hung austere and bare.I would walk in and suddenly the trueSharp sweet sweat scent controlled the airAnd life was in that small still living breath.Where are you? since so much of you is here,Your unique odour quite ignoring death.My hands reach out to touch, to hold what's dearAnd vital in my longing empty arms.But other clothes fill up the space, your space,And scent on scent send out strange false alarms.Not of your odour there is not a trace.But something unexpected still breaks throughThe goneness to the presentness of you.
Madeleine L'Engle
Mine Enemy is growing old --I have at last Revenge --The Palate of the Hate departs --If any would avenge Let him be quick -- the Viand flits --It is a faded Meat --Anger as soon as fed is dead --'Tis starving makes it fat
Emily Dickinson
Each month is gay,Each season nice,When eatingChicken soupWith rice
Maurice Sendak
This is the Hour of Lead – Remembered, if outlived, As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow – First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go –
Emily Dickinson
Love me in actions, not in words.
Dee Dee M. Scott
Love, our subject:we've trained it like ivy to our walls.
Adrienne Rich
Birds are flyin' south for winter.Here's the Weird-Bird headin' north,Wings a-flappin', beak a-chatterin',Cold head bobbin' back 'n' forth.He says, "It's not that I like iceOr freezin' winds and snowy ground.It's just sometimes it's kind of niceTo be the only bird in town.
Shel Silverstein
the phantom of the man-who-would-understand,the lost brother, the twin ---for him did we leave our mothers,deny our sisters, over and over?did we invent him, conjure himover the charring log,nights, late, in the snowbound cabindid we dream or scry his facein the liquid embers,the man-who-would-dare-to-know-us?It was never the rapist:it was the brother, lost,the comrade/twin whose palmwould bear a lifeline like our own:decisive, arrowy,forked-lightning of insatiate desireIt was never the crude pestle, the blindramrod we were after:merely a fellow-creaturewith natural resources equal to our own.
Adrienne Rich
if youdon't want toend up insomeone else'spoem,then maybeyou shouldstarttreatingpeoplebetterfor achange.- an unapologetic poet.
Amanda Lovelace
won't you celebrate with mewhat i have shaped intoa kind of life? i had no model.born in babylonboth nonwhite and womanwhat did i see to be except myself?i made it uphere on this bridge betweenstarshine and clay,my one hand holding tightmy other hand; come celebratewith me that everydaysomething has tried to kill meand has failed.
Lucille Clifton
Sometimes with one I love, I fill myself with rage, for fear I effuse unreturn'd love; But now I think there is no unreturn'd love—the pay is certain, one way or another; (I loved a certain person ardently, and my love was not return'd; Yet out of that, I have written these songs.)
Walt Whitman
I saw thee once - only once - years ago:I must not say how many - but not many.It was a July midnight; and from outA full-orbed moon, that, like thine own soul, soaring,Sought a precipitate pathway up through heaven,There fell a silvery-silken veil of light,With quietude, and sultriness, and slumber,Upon the upturn'd faces of a thousandRoses that grew in an enchanted garden,Where no wind dared stir, unless on tiptoe -Fell on the upturn'd faces of these rosesThat gave out, in return for the love-light,Their odorous souls in an ecstatic death -Fell on the upturn'd faces of these rosesThat smiled and died in the parterre, enchantedBy thee, and by the poetry of thy presence.Clad all in white, upon a violet bankI saw thee half reclining; while the moonFell upon the upturn'd faces of the roses,And on thine own, upturn'd - alas, in sorrow!Was it not Fate, that, on this July midnight -Was it not Fate, (whose name is also Sorrow,)That bade me pause before that garden-gate,To breathe the incense of those slumbering roses?No footsteps stirred: the hated world all slept,Save only thee and me. (Oh, Heaven! - oh, G**!How my heart beats in coupling those two words!)Save only thee and me. I paused - I looked -And in an instant all things disappeared.(Ah, bear in mind the garden was enchanted!)The pearly lustre of the moon went out:The mossy banks and the meandering paths,The happy flowers and the repining trees,Were seen no more: the very roses' odorsDied in the arms of the adoring airs.All - all expired save thee - save less than thou:Save only divine light in thine eyes -Save but the soul in thine uplifted eyes.I saw but them - they were the world to me.I saw but them - saw only them for hours -Saw only them until the moon went down.What wild heart-histories seemed to lie enwrittenUpon those crystalline, celestial spheres!How dark a wo! yet how sublime a hope!How silently serene a sea of pride!How daring an ambition! yet how deep -How fathomless a capacity for love!But now, at length, dear Dian sank from sight,Into a western couch of thunder-cloud;And thou, a ghost, amid the entombing treesDidst glide away. Only thine eyes remained.They would not go - they never yet have gone.Lighting my lonely pathway home that night,They have not left me (as my hopes have) since.They follow me - they lead me through the years.They are my ministers - yet I their slave.Their office is to illumine and enkindle -My duty, to be saved by their bright fire,And purified in their electric fire,And sanctified in their elysian fire.They fill my soul with Beauty (which is Hope,)And are far up in Heaven - the stars I kneel toIn the sad, silent watches of my night;While even in the meridian glare of dayI see them still - two sweetly scintillantVenuses, unextinguished by the sun!
Edgar Allan Poe
In the dark I rest,unready for the light which dawnsday after day,eager to be shared.Black silk, shelter me.I needmore of the night before I openeyes and heartto illumination. I must stillgrow in the dark like a rootnot ready, not ready at all.
Denise Levertov
The JewelThere is this caveIn the air behind my bodyThat nobody is going to touch:A cloister, a silenceClosing around a blossom of fire.When I stand upright in the wind,My bones turn to dark emeralds.
James Wright
I stepped from Plank to PlankSo slow and cautiouslyThe Stars about my Head I felt,About my Feet the Sea.I knew not but the nextWould be my final inch —This gave me that precarious GaitSome call Experience.
Emily Dickinson
All the black leathershe needsis the E-Z boy reclinerwhere her love is parkedwith one of his hands wrapped around a remote,the other, a bottle of beer.She's right. It's kinky.The way he doesn't look awayfrom the TV,as her head bobsin his laplike a fisherman's floaton a nature program,hecticwith the pacehis breath sets.His crotch swellsunder her mouth'sprowess. He's sucha sweethearthe waitsuntil thecommercialsto come.
Daphne Gottlieb
I have been to lots of partiesand acted perfectly disgracefulbut I never actually collapsedoh Lana Turner we love you get up
Frank O'Hara
The Soul selects her own Society—Then—shuts the Door—To her divine Majority—Present no more—Unmoved—she notes the Chariots—pausing—At her low Gate—Unmoved—an Emperor be kneelingUpon her Mat—I've known her—from an ample nation—Choose One—Then—close the Valves of her attention—Like Stone—
Emily Dickinson
A FEATHER.A feather is trimmed, it is trimmed by the light and the bug and the post, it is trimmed by little leaning and by all sorts of mounted reserves and loud volumes. It is surely cohesive.
Gertrude Stein
Poetry may make us from time to time a little more aware of the deeper, unnamed feelings which form the substratum of our being, to which we rarely penetrate; for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves.
T.S Eliot
The ambitions are wake up, breathe, keep breathing.
Nicole Blackman
and I ask myself and you, which of our visions will claim uswhich will we claimhow will we go on livinghow will we touch, what will we knowwhat will we say to each other.
Adrienne Rich
There is no poetry where there are no mistakes.
Joy Harjo
Why love what you will lose?There is nothing else to love.
Louise Glück
She dealt her pretty words like Blades --How glittering they shone --And every One unbared a NerveOr wantoned with a Bone --She never deemed -- she hurt --That -- is not Steel's Affair --A vulgar grimace in the Flesh --How ill the Creatures bear --To Ache is human -- not polite --The Film upon the eyeMortality's old Custom --Just locking up -- to Die.
Emily Dickinson
You just go on your nerve.
Frank O'Hara
Too many poets act like a middle-aged mother trying to get her kids to eat too much cooked meat, and potatoes with drippings (tears). I don't give a damn whether they eat or not. Forced feeding leads to excessive thinness (effete). Nobody should experience anything they don't need to, if they don't need poetry bully for them. I like the movies too. And after all, only Whitman and Crane and Williams, of the American poets, are better than the movies.
Frank O'Hara
We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race.
Tom Schulman
at first when the rain fell from the sky so wide and deepit smelled like sage, my favorite smellI went up on the plateau to watch it cometo see the gifts it always broughtbut this rain changed from blue to black and leftnothing.
Ally Condie
i don't want to hate the presidenti don't want to go to harvardi don't want to win the pulitzer prizei just want to sit in my bathtuband think about relationships i will never havewith people i will never meetand then go lay in my bedwith a magnifying glassand count all the stiches in my sheetsuntil i fall asleepand wake upto repeat again.
Ellen Kennedy
Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.
Kahlil Gibran
No duties. I don’t have to be profound.I don’t have to be artistically perfect.Or sublime. Or edifying.I just wander. I say: ‘You were running,That’s fine. It was the thing to do.’And now the music of the worlds transforms me.My planet enters a different house.Trees and lawns become more distinct.Philosophies one after another go out.Everything is lighter yet not less odd.Sauces, wine vintages, dishes of meat.We talk a little of district fairs,Of travels in a covered wagon with a cloud of dust behind,Of how rivers once were, what the scent of calamus is.That’s better than examining one’s private dreams.And meanwhile it has arrived. It’s here, invisible.Who can guess how it got here, everywhere.Let others take care of it. Time for me to play hooky.Buena notte. Ciao. Farewell.
Czesław Miłosz
I am solitary as grass. What is it I miss?Shall I ever find it, whatever it is?
Sylvia Plath
The first time I saw her,Everything in my head went quiet.
Neil Hilborn
Come windless invaderI am a carnival ofStars, a poem of blood.
Sonia Sanchez
GATHERING LEAVESSpades take up leavesNo better than spoons,And bags full of leavesAre light as balloons.I make a great noiseOf rustling all dayLike rabbit and deerRunning away.But the mountains I raiseElude my embrace,Flowing over my armsAnd into my face.I may load and unloadAgain and againTill I fill the whole shed,And what have I then?Next to nothing for weight,And since they grew dullerFrom contact with earth,Next to nothing for color.Next to nothing for use.But a crop is a crop,And who's to say whereThe harvest shall stop?
Robert Frost
What makes us leave what we love best?What is it inside us that keeps erasing itselfWhen we need it most,That sends us into uncertainty for its own sakeAnd holds us flush there until we begin to love itAnd have to begin again?What is it within our own lives we decline to liveWhenever we find it, making our days unendurable,And nights almost visionless?I still don't know yet, but I do it.
Charles Wright
I am inhabited by a cry. Nightly it flaps outLooking, with its hooks, for something to love.
Sylvia Plath
Poetry is prose in slow motion.
Nicholson Baker
Tears upon the dry sponge of heartdo not prove I am Promethean.
Adrian C. Louis
If you can not be a poet, be the poem.
David Carradine
Failure: the renewable resource.
Kay Ryan
It is sweet to think I was a companion in an expedition that never ends
Czesław Miłosz