Quotes by Poets - Page 150

What makes an amazing artist? It's not his ability to impress but his skill in touching people's lives through his craft. When he does even a simple piece of work with not much adornment (fanciful words, colors) and it moves the hearts of his audience, it is considered to be a masterpiece! A true artist lets people enter a different kind of sanctuary out of the conventional. What makes his work standout is its uniqueness -if it has a HEART.
Elizabeth E. Castillo
I turn to Willa Cather’s quote: Artistic growth is, more than it is anything else, a refining of the sense of truthfulness. The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy; only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is.
Cameron Conaway
You are looking outside, and that is what you should most avoid right now. No one can advise or help you - no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple "I must," then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your whole life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse...go into yourself and see how deep the place is from which your life flows; at its source you will find the answer to, the question of whether you must create. Accept that answer, just as it is given to you, without trying to interpret it. Perhaps you will discover that you are called to be an artist. Then take that destiny upon yourself, and bear it, its burden and its greatness, without ever asking what reward might come from outside.
Rainer Maria Rilke
The greatest artist and web-designer ever is indeed a spider!
Munia Khan
Cubism is a Cathedral of shit.
Francis Picabia
A creator is not in advance of his generation but he is the first of his contemporaries to be conscious of what is happening to his generation.
Gertrude Stein
I appreciate a book intended to be judged by its cover. The insincere readers are often weeded out while the sincere readers remain curious.
Criss Jami
Is the phrase 'pay' or 'play the piper'I inquire, why'Cause I admire a desire to flip the switchYeah make a way to face the music likeLife savings for a mosh pit riotListen to a mixRock the tickets, higher volumeVelocity which shakes a cockpit's pilot
Criss Jami
Some things are so silly they have a certain brilliance to them. Other things, set as standards for brilliance and therefore exalted by many who don't know why, become tarnished because of it.
Criss Jami
You are the artist, and your days the canvas. Will you create an original masterpiece, or live a paint-by-numbers kind of life?
John Mark Green
Oh say can you see Alma. The darlingof Them. All her friends were artists.They alone have memories. They alonelove flowers. They alone give partiesand die. Poor Alma. They alone.She died,and it was as if all the jewels in the worldhad heaved a sigh. The seismographat Fordham university registered, for once,a spiritual note. How like a sliverin her own short fat muscular foot.She loved the Western World, thoughthere are some who say she isn't really dead.
Frank O'Hara
The Artist," an ancient sage had once said, "is always sitting on the doorsteps of the rich.
Charles Bukowski
Ordinary persons, he said, smiling, found no differences between men. The artist found them all.
Alexander Theroux
Genius - the pursuit of madness.
Criss Jami
a politician is an arse uponwhich everyone has sat except a man
E.E. Cummings
Inside you there’s an artist you don’t know about… say yes quickly, if you know, if you’ve known it from before the beginning of the universe.
Jalaluddin Rumi
The machines are too dull when weare lion-poems that move & breathe.
Michael McClure
No map to help us find the tranquil flat lands, clearings calm, fields without mean fences. Rolling down the other side of life our compass is the sureness of ourselves. Time may make us rugged, ragged round the edges, but know and understand that love is still the safest place to land.
Rod McKuen
When I Read the Book"When I read the book, the biography famous, And is this then (said I) what the author calls a man's life? And so will some one when I am dead and gone write my life? (As if any man really knew aught of my life,Why even I myself I often think know little or nothing of my real life, Only a few hints, a few diffused faint clews and indirections I seek for my own use to trace out here.)
Walt Whitman
Suicide carried off many. Drink and the devil took care of the rest
Robert Louis Stevenson
You should gofrom place to placerecovering the poemsthat have been written for youto which you can affix your signature.Don't discuss these matterswith anyone.Retrieve. Retrieve.When the basket is fullsomeone will appearto whom you can present it.
Leonard Cohen
Before people complain of the obscurity of modern poetry, they should first examine their consciences and ask themselves with how many people and on how many occasions they have genuinely and profoundly shared some experience with another.
W.H. Auden
Success"If you want a thing bad enoughTo go out and fight for it,Work day and night for it,Give up your time and your peace and your sleep for itIf only desire of itMakes you quite mad enoughNever to tire of it,Makes you hold all other things tawdry and cheap for itIf life seems all empty and useless without itAnd all that you scheme and you dream is about it,If gladly you'll sweat for it,Fret for it,Plan for it,Lose all your terror of God or man for it,If you'll simply go after that thing that you want.With all your capacity,Strength and sagacity,Faith, hope and confidence, stern pertinacity,If neither cold poverty, famished and gaunt,Nor sickness nor painOf body or brainCan turn you away from the thing that you want,If dogged and grim you besiege and beset it,You'll get it!
Berton Braley
Horse[Man you will find herea new representation of the universeat its most poetic and most modernMan man man man man manGive yourself up to this art where the sublimedoes not exclude charmand brilliancy does not blur the nuanceit is now or never the momentto be sensitive to poetry for it dominatesall dreadfullyGuillaume Apollinaire]
Guillaume Apollinaire
[poems are] crystals deposited after the effervescent contact of the spirit with reality.(cristaux deposes apres l'effervescent contact de l'esprit avec la realite)
Pierre Reverdy
The rat isthe mous-tacheinthetrache.the wrong-doerinthesoer.
J. Patrick Lewis
When one does not die for the other, then we are already dead_
Tasos Livaditis
But I have seen the best of you and the worst of you, and I choose both
Sarah Kay
The burning off and the gathering together are one.
Billy Marshall-Stoneking
BurialCathy Linh CheThere is the rain, the odor of fresh earth, and you, grandmother, in a box. I bury the distance, 22 years of not meeting you and your ruined hands.I bury your hair, parted to the side and pinned back, your áo dài of crushed velvet, the implements you used to farm,the stroke which claimed your right side, the land you gave up when you remarried, your grief over my grandfather's passing,the war that evaporated your father's leg, the war that crushed your bowls, your childhood home razedby the rutted wheels of an American tank— I bury it all.You learned that nothing stays in this life, not your daughter, not your uncle, not even the dignity of leaving this worldwith your pants on. The bed sores on your hips were clean and sunken in. What did I know, child who heard you speak only once,and when we met for the first time, tears watered the side of your face. I held your hand and said,bà ngoai, bà ngoaiTen years later, I returned. It rained on your gravesite. In the picture above your tomb,you looked just like my mother. We lit the joss sticks and planted them. We kept the encroaching grass at bay.
Cathy Linh Che
You will not know all about the firesimply because you asked.When she speaks of the forestthis is what she is teaching you,you who thought you were her master.
Katie Ford
An envy of that one consummate partSwept me, who mock. Whether I laugh or weep, Some inner silences are at my heart.
Léonie Adams
Beyond the YearsI the years the answer lies,Beyond where brood the grieving skies And Night drops tears.Where Faith rod-chastened smiles to rise And doff its fears,And carping Sorrow pines and dies— Beyond the years.IIBeyond the years the prayer for restShall beat no more within the breast; The darkness clears,And Morn perched on the mountain's crest Her form uprears—The day that is to come is best, Beyond the years.IIIBeyond the years the soul shall findThat endless peace for which it pined, For light appears,And to the eyes that still were blind With blood and tears,Their sight shall come all unconfined Beyond the years.
Paul Laurence Dunbar
The gray sea and the long black land; And the yellow half-moon large and low: And the startled little waves that leap In fiery ringlets from their sleep, As I gain the cove with pushing prow,And quench its speed i’ the slushy sand.
Robert Browning
William tell, William tell,Take your arrow, grip it well,There’s the apple– – aim for the middle– –Oh well … you just missed by a little.
Shel Silverstein
In Flanders fields the poppies blowBetween the crosses, row on rowThat mark our place; and in the skyThe larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns belowWe are the DeadShort days agoWe lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow/Loved, and were loved, and now we lieIn Flanders FieldsTake up our quarrel with the foeTo you from failing hands we throw The torchbe yours to hold it highIf ye break faith with us who dieWe shall not sleep/though poppies growIn Flanders Fields
John McCrae
True poetry is embarrassing.
Julien Torma
When They Die We Change Our Minds About Them When they die we change our minds about them. While they live we see the plenty hard they’re trying,to be a star, or nice, or wise, and so we do not quite believe them. When they die, suddenly they are what they claimed. Turns out, that’s what one of those looks like. The cold war over manner of manly or mission is over. Same person, same facts and acts, just now a quiet brain stem. We no longer begrudge his or her stupid luck.When they die we change our minds about them. I will try to believe while you yet breathe.
Jennifer Michael Hecht
Turn your attentions to it. Try to raise up the sunken feelings of this enormous past; your personality will grow stronger, your solitude will expand and become a place where you can live in the twilight, where the noise of other people passes by, far in the distance.
Rainer Maria Rilke
When You See Millions of the Mouthless Dead"When you see millions of the mouthless deadAcross your dreams in pale battalions go,Say not soft things as other men have said,That you'll remember. For you need not so.Give them not praise. For, deaf, how should they knowIt is not curses heaped on each gashed head?Nor tears. Their blind eyes see not your tears flow.Nor honour. It is easy to be dead.Say only this, "They are dead." Then add thereto,"Yet many a better one has died before."Then, scanning all the o'ercrowded mass, should youPerceive one face that you loved heretofore,It is a spook. None wears the face you knew.Great death has made all his for evermore.
Charles Hamilton Sorley
Reckless of my mortality,Strengthen me to behold a face,To know the spirit of a beloved oneYet to endure, yet to dare!
Edgar Lee Masters
Time slips by; our sorrows do not turn into poems,And what is invisible stays that way.
Mark Strand
The sonnet, a lyrical poem, the beauty and magic... convey with our hearts the truth of the universe in a single moment briefly.
R.M. Engelhardt (TALON)
I started writing poetry and philosophy when I was 17 years old and my mind so was wild. Now I'm 56 and I often want to write like a child.
Stanley Victor Paskavich
Most of the poems I write take 5 minutes, but the words can give a lifetime of relief. Many people that have read my book say it helped them with their grief.
Stanley Victor Paskavich
I do have a funny perception of mine I'd like to share. Being basically a lifetime poet. I've had many people say "I don't like poetry" But they'll listen to song after song that rhymes on the end in couplets Just a thought...
Stanley Victor Paskavich
In Damascus:poems become diaphanousThey’re neither sensualnor intellectualthey are what echo saysto echo . . .
Mahmoud Darwish
LoreleiIt is no night to drown in:A full moon, river lapsingBlack beneath bland mirror-sheen,The blue water-mists droppingScrim after scrim like fishnetsThough fishermen are sleeping,The massive castle turretsDoubling themselves in a glassAll stillness. Yet these shapes floatUp toward me, troubling the faceOf quiet. From the nadirThey rise, their limbs ponderousWith richness, hair heavierThan sculptured marble. They singOf a world more full and clearThan can be. Sisters, your songBears a burden too weightyFor the whorled ear's listeningHere, in a well-steered country,Under a balanced ruler.Deranging by harmonyBeyond the mundane order,Your voices lay siege. You lodgeOn the pitched reefs of nightmare,Promising sure harborage;By day, descant from bordersOf hebetude, from the ledgeAlso of high windows. WorseEven than your maddeningSong, your silence. At the sourceOf your ice-hearted calling-Drunkenness of the great depths.O river, I see driftingDeep in your flux of silverThose great goddesses of peace.Stone, stone, ferry me down there.
Sylvia Plath
I started to think about the abyss that separates the poet from the reader and the next thing I knew I was deeply depressed.
Roberto Bolaño
One must speak in such a way that although someone else, or many others, or an infinite number of people have said it before, it seems as though you said it first.
Juan Ramón Jiménez
Her breast is fit for pearls,But I was not a "Diver" - Her brow is fit for thronesBut I have not a crest,Her heart is fit for home-I- a Sparrow- build thereSweet of twigs and twineMy perennial nest.
Emily Dickinson
The fatal problem with poetry: poems.
Ben Lerner
Poetry": What kind of art assumes the dislike of its audience and what kind of artist aligns herself with that dislike, even encourages it? An art hated from without and within.
Ben Lerner
LOVE the hideous in order to find the sublime core of it.
Mina Loy
my poems are only bits of scratchingon the floor of acage.
Charles Bukowski
We think we owe everyone something. We think we need to explain ourselves and we think too much about thinking too much.And it is funny how we think we know it all, but the reality is this: everything we think that brings us together is everything that sets us further apart. And over thinking of how different we all are; is failing to recognize of how connected we all could really be.
Robert M. Drake
poetry is not—except in a very limited sense—a form of self-expression. Who on earth supposes that the pearl expresses the oyster?
Cecil Day-Lewis
Names sound nice because no one peeks behind the cover to see the sad face of a poem crying for meaning, while the name of the creator proudly smiles from the title.
Dejan Stojanovic
A poem is its own name and cover.
Dejan Stojanovic
I believe that poems die the moment they are outwardly expressed.
Maurice Maeterlinck