Quotes by Poets - Page 37

A poet is a verb that blossoms light in gardens of dawn, or sometimes midnight.
Aberjhani
Authors can write stories without people assuming that they are autobiographies, but songwriters and poets are often considered to be the characters in their works. I like Michelangelo's vision, 'I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.
Criss Jami
There is a master way with words which is not learned but is instead developed: a deaf man develops exceptional vision, a blind man exceptional hearing, a silent man, when given a piece of paper...
Criss Jami
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thoughtAs doth eternity...
John Keats
Old age doth in sharp pains abound;We are belabored by the gout,Our blindness is a dark profound,Our deafness each one laughs about.Then reason's light with falling rayDoth but a trembling flicker cast.Honor to age, ye children pay!Alas! my fifty years are past!
Pierre-Jean de Béranger
Let my toes teach the shore how to feel a tranquil lifethrough the wetness of sands Let my heart latch the doorof blackness, as all my pain now blue sky understands
Munia Khan
The worm doth woo the mortal, death claims a living bride, Night unto day is married, morn unto eventide, Earth a merry damsel, and heaven a knight so true,And Earth is quite coquettish, and beseemeth in vain to sue.
Emily Dickinson
The birth of a true poet is neither an insignificant event nor an easy delivery. Complications generally begin long before the fated soul carries its dubious light into whatever womb has been kind enough to volunteer the intricate machinery of its blood and prayers and muscles for a gestation period much longer than nine months or even nine years.
Aberjhani
How do I feel today? I feel as unfit as an unfiddle,And it is the result of a certain turbulence in the mind and an uncertain burbulence in the middle.What was it, anyway, that angry thing that flew at me?I am unused to banshees crying Boo at me.Your wife can’t be a banshee—Or can she?
Ogden Nash
Little deer, I've stuffed all the world's diseases inside you. / Your veins are thorns // and the good cells are lost in the deep dark woods / of your organs.
Pascale Petit
When a reader enters the pages of a book of poetry, he or she enters a world where dreams transform the past into knowledge made applicable to the present, and where visions shape the present into extraordinary possibilities for the future.
Aberjhani
In summer the empire of insects spreads.
Adam Zagajewski
ONE WORDOne word— one stonein a cold river.One more stone—I'll need many stonesif I'm going to get over.
Olav H. Hauge
Will be but corpses dressed in frocks, who cannot speak to birds or rocks.
Gary Snyder
I live my life in growing orbits which move out over the things of the world.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Music resembles poetry, in eachAre nameless graces which no methods teach,And which a master hand alone can reach.
Alexander Pope
Matched with an aged wife, I mete and doleUnequal laws unto a savage race,That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
Alfred Tennyson
What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond marital, filial, national. Love that casts a widening pool of light. Love with no need to preempt grievance.In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp -- praise song for walking forward in that light.
Elizabeth Alexander
Each arrow you shoot offcarries its own targetinto the decidedlysecrettangle
Paul Celan
… the fisherman’s daughter grinding serenity in her coffee grinder.
Yiannis Ritsos
Come boy, and pour for me a cupOf old Falernian. Fill it upWith wine, strong, sparkling, bright, and clear;Our host decrees no water here.Let dullards drink the Nymph's pale brew,The sluggish thin their blood with dew.For such pale stuff we have no use;For us the purple grape's rich juice.Begone, ye chilling water sprite;Here burning Bacchus rules tonight!
Catullus
anyone who has no feelings for animals has a dead heart.
Raegan Butcher
a happy birthdaythis evening, I sat by an open windowand read till the light was gone and the bookwas no more than a part of the darkness.I could easily have switched on a lamp,but I wanted to ride the day down into night,to sit alone, and smooth the unreadable pagewith the pale gray ghost of my hand
Ted Kooser
Once a poet calls his myth a myth, he prevents the reader from treating it as a reality; we use the word 'myth' only for stories we ourselves cannot believe.
Adam Kirsch
From her thighs, she gives you lifeAnd how you treat she who gives you lifeShows how much you value the life given to you by the Creator.And from seed to dustThere is ONE soul above all others --That you must always show patience, respect, and trustAnd this woman is your mother.And when your soul departs your bodyAnd your deeds are weighed against the featherThere is only one soul who can save yoursAnd this woman is your mother.And when the heart of the universeAsks her hair and mind,Whether you were gentle and kind to herHer heart will be forced to remain silentAnd her hair will speak freely as a separate entity,Very much like the seaweed in the sea --It will reveal all that it has heard and seen.This woman whose heart has seen yours,First before anybody else in the world,And whose womb had opened the doorFor your eyes to experience light and more --Is your very own MOTHER.So, no matter whether your mother has been cruel,Manipulative, abusive, mentally sick, or simply childishHow you treat her is the ultimate test.If she misguides you, forgive her and show her the right wayWith simple wisdom, gentleness, and kindness.And always remember,That the queen in the Creator's kingdom,Who sits on the throne of all existence,Is exactly the same as in yours.And her name is,THE DIVINE MOTHER.
Suzy Kassem
English:Ô, take this eager dance you fool, don’t brandish your stick at me. I have several reasons to travel on, on to the endless sea: I have lost my love. I’ve drunk my purse. My girl has gone, and left me rags to sleep upon. These old man’s gloves conceal the hands with which I’ve killed but one!Francais: Idiot, prends cette danse ardente, au lieu de tendre ton bâton.J'en ai des raisons de voyager encore sur la mer infinie: J'ai perdu l'amour et j'ai bu ma bourse.Ma belle m'a quitté, j'ai ses haillons pour m'abriter. Mes gants de vieillard cachent les mains d'un fameux assassin!
Roman Payne
Base words are uttered only by the baseAnd can for such at once be understood;But noble platitudes — ah, there's a caseWhere the most careful scrutiny is neededTo tell a voice that's genuinely goodFrom one that's base but merely has succeeded.
W.H. Auden
There have been times I've felt so much art in my soul I grew sick of artists.
Criss Jami
We made love outdoorsWithout a roof, I like most, Without stove, to make love, assuming the weather be fair and balmy, and the earth beneath be clean. Our souls intertwined and gushing of dew.
Roman Payne
I love my love with a b because she is peculiar.
Gertrude Stein
CALL YOURSELFLook deep in the mirrorAnd say: 'I LOVE YOU'And immediatelyAn electric current willRipple throughout your soulAnd burst through your eyesLike shooting starsDancing across the skiesIn ecstasy.To tell your soul you love it -Is like rememberingWHO YOU AREAfter being in a comaFor a hundred years.Your face will beam the lightOf a hundred galaxies.
Suzy Kassem
I took her to bed with silk and song'Lay still, my love, I won’t be long,I must prepare my body for passion.''O, your body you give, but all else you ration...
Roman Payne
At the edge of madness you howl diamonds and pearls.
Aberjhani
Las lágrimas que no se lloranesperan en pequeños lagos?O serán ríos invisiblesque corren hacia la tristeza?
Pablo Neruda
Cuando vayamos al maryo te diré mi secreto:Me envuelve, pero no es ola...Me amarga..., pero no es sal...
Dulce María Loynaz
Did I live the spring I’d sought?It’s true in joy, I walked along,took part in dance, and sang the song.and never tried to bind an hourto my borrowed garden bower;nor did I once entreata day to slumber at my feet.Yet days aren’t lulled by lyric song,like morning birds they pass along,o’er crests of trees, to none belong;o’er crests of trees of drying dew,their larking flight, my hands, eschewThus I’ll say it once and true…From all that I saw, and everywhere I wandered,I learned that time cannot be spent,It only can be squandered.
Roman Payne
Modern poetry, for me, began not in English at all but in Spanish, in the poems of Lorca.
W.S. Merwin
Thus weary of the world, away she hies,And yokes her silver doves; by whose swift aidTheir mistress mounted through the empty skiesIn her light chariot quickly is convey'd;Holding their course to Paphos, where their queenMeans to immure herself and not be seen.
William Shakespeare
A JEWELRY STORE NAMED INDIAIf you hold this Dazzling emeraldUp to the sky,It will shine a billion Beautiful miraclesPainted from the tearsOf the Most High.Plucked from the lush gardensOf a yellowish-green paradise,Look inside this hypnotic gemAnd a kaleidoscope of Titillating, Soul-raising Sights and colorsWill tease and seduceYour eyes and mind.Tell me, sir.Have you ever heardA peacock sing?Hold your earTo this mystical stoneAnd you will hearSacred hymns flowingTo the vibrationsOf the perfumedWind.
Suzy Kassem
Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself, but with its subject.
John Keats
Interior of the hand. Sole that has come to walkonly on feelings. That faces upwardand in its mirrorreceives heavenly roads, which travelalong themselves.That has learned to walk upon waterwhen it scoops,that walks upon wells,transfiguring every path.That steps into other hands,changes those that are like itinto a landscape:wanders and arrives within them,fills them with arrival.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Soy el desesperado, la palabra sin ecos, el que lo perdiò todo, y el que todo lo tuvo.
Pablo Neruda
The Garden En robe de parade. - SamainLike a skein of loose silk blown against a wallShe walks by the railing of a path in Kensington Gardens,And she is dying piece-mealof a sort of emotional anaemia.And round about there is a rabbleOf the filthy, sturdy, unkillable infants of the very poor.They shall inherit the earth.In her is the end of breeding.Her boredom is exquisite and excessive.She would like some one to speak to her,And is almost afraid that I will commit that indiscretion.
Ezra Pound
High FlightOh! I have slipped the surly bonds of EarthAnd danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirthof sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred thingsYou have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swungHigh in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flungMy eager craft through footless halls of air....Up, up the long, delirious, burning blueI’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace.Where never lark, or even eagle flew —And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trodThe high untrespassed sanctity of space,- Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
John Gillespie Magee Jr.
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
Eros, again now, the loosener of limbs troubles me,Bittersweet, sly, uncontrollable creature….
Sappho
True and false fears let us refrain, Let us love nobly, and live, and add again Years and years unto years, till we attain To write threescore: this is the second of our reign.
John Donne
And to 'scape stormy days, I choose an everlasting night.
John Donne
So the nymphs they spoke,we kissed and laid.By noontime’s hourour love was made.Like braided chains of crocus stems,we lay entwined, I laid with them.Our breath, one glassy, tideless sea,our bodies draping wearily,we slept, I slept so lucidly,with hopes to stay this memory.
Roman Payne
I watched the spinning stars, grateful, sad and proud, as only a man who has outlived his destiny and realizes he might yet forge himself another, can be.
Roger Zelazny
All shadows of clouds the sun cannot hide like the moon cannot stop oceanic tide;but a hidden star can still be smiling at night's black spell on darkness, beguiling
Munia Khan
Fireflies in the GardenBy Robert Frost 1874–1963 Here come real stars to fill the upper skies, And here on earth come emulating flies, That though they never equal stars in size, (And they were never really stars at heart) Achieve at times a very star-like start. Only, of course, they can't sustain the part.
Robert Frost
You will come away bruised.You will come away bruisedbut this will give you poetry.
Yrsa Daley-Ward
so much of the world is plunged in darkness and chaos...So ring the bells that still can ringForget your perfect offeringThere is a crack in everythingThat’s how the light gets in.
Leonard Cohen
Those ancients who in poetry presented the golden age, who sang its happy state,perhaps, in their Parnassus, dreamt this place. Here, mankind's root was innocent; and herewere every fruit and never-ending spring; these streams--the nectar of which poets sing.
Dante Alighieri
When soul meets soul on lovers' lips.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Hinged to forgetfulness like a door,she slowly closed out of sight,and she was the woman I loved,but too many times she slept likea mechanical deer in my caresses,and I ached in the metal silenceof her dreams.
Richard Brautigan
I fancied my luck to be witnessing yet another full moon. True, I’d seen hundreds of full moons in my life, but they were not limitless. When one starts thinking of the full moon as a common sight that will come again to one’s eyes ad-infinitum, the value of life is diminished and life goes by uncherished. ‘This may be my last moon,’ I sighed, feeling a sudden sweep of sorrow; and went back to reading more of The Odyssey.
Roman Payne
Our love was bornoutside the walls,in the wind,in the night,in the earth,and that's why the clay and the flower,the mud and the rootsknow your name.
Pablo Neruda
Some men are born sodomites, some achieve sodomy, and some have sodomy thrust upon them...
Aleister Crowley