Quotes by Poets - Page 423

Without poets, without artists, men would soon weary of nature's monotony. The sublime idea men have of the universe would collapse with dizzying speed. The order which we find in nature, and which is only an effect of art, would at once vanish. Everything would break up in chaos. There would be no seasons, no civilization, no thought, no humanity; even life would give way, and the impotent void would reign everywhere.
Guillaume Apollinaire
Ik weet nietof er woorden bestaandie de geur van je huidkunnen vangen, het beweeglijkelicht in je ogen, de warmtedie in me opspringt zodraje me aanraakt, het rullegevoel van je haaraan mijn vingertoppen,de bloemblaadjestere huidvan je oogleden tegenmijn lippen.Als daar woorden voor waren,kon ik alles snelvastleggen op papiervoor als je er niet bent(en dat is dikwijls).
Hanny Michaelis
Adrijene, nemoj da se duriš!Vrati se!U redu grešila samduge godine nisam se vracala kuci,ali sam ti uvek krilada je to zato što sam bila u zatvoru!Grešila sam priznajemcesto sam tukla psa,ali sam te volela!Adrijene, nemoj da se duriš!Vrati se!
Jacques Prévert
Memory revises me.
Li-Young Lee
1.I told you that I was a roadway of potholes, not safe to cross. You said nothing, showed up in my driveway wearing roller-skates.2.The first time I asked you on a date, after you hung up, I held the air between our phones against my ear and whispered, “You will fall in love with me. Then, just months later, you will fall out. I will pretend the entire time that I don’t know it’s coming.”3.Once, I got naked and danced around your bedroom, awkward and safe. You did the same. We held each other without hesitation and flailed lovely. This was vulnerability foreplay.4.The last eight times I told you I loved you, they sounded like apologies.5.You recorded me a CD of you repeating, “You are beautiful.” I listened to it until I no longer thought in my own voice.6.Into the half-empty phone line, I whispered, “We will wake up believing the worst in each other. We will spit shrapnel at each other’s hearts. The bruises will lodge somewhere we don’t know how to look for and I will still pretend I don’t know its coming.”7.You photographed my eyebrow shapes and turned them into flashcards: mood on one side, correct response on the other. You studied them until you knew when to stay silent.8.I bought you an entire bakery so that we could eat nothing but breakfast for a week. Breakfast, untainted by the day ahead, was when we still smiled at each other as if we meant it.9.I whispered, “I will latch on like a deadbolt to a door and tell you it is only because I want to protect you. Really, I’m afraid that without you I mean nothing.”10.I gave you a bouquet of plane tickets so I could practice the feeling of watching you leave.11.I picked you up from the airport limping. In your absence, I’d forgotten how to walk. When I collapsed at your feet, you refused to look at me until I learned to stand up without your help.12.Too scared to move, I stared while you set fire to your apartment – its walls decaying beyond repair, roaches invading the corpse of your bedroom. You tossed all the faulty appliances through the smoke out your window, screaming that you couldn’t handle choking on one more thing that wouldn’t just fix himself.13.I whispered, “We will each weed through the last year and try to spot the moment we began breaking. We will repel sprint away from each other. Your voice will take months to drain out from my ears. You will throw away your notebook of tally marks from each time you wondered if I was worth the work. The invisible bruises will finally surface and I will still pretend that I didn’t know it was coming.”14.The entire time, I was only pretending that I knew it was coming.
Miles Walser
Mind's acres are forever green: Oh, IShall keep perpetual summer here; I shallRefuse to let one startled swallow die,Or, from the copper beeches, one leaf fall.
Stanley Kunitz
What is this life so full of care,We don't have time to stand and stare.
W.H. Davies
This man has talent, that man geniusAnd here's the strange and cruel difference:Talent gives pence and his reward is gold,Genius gives gold and gets no more than pence.
W.H. Davies
SPRING POEMIt is spring, my decision, the earthferments like rising breador refuse, we are burninglast year's weeds, the smokeflares from the road, the clumped stalksglow like sluggish phoenixes / it wasn'tonly my fault / birdsongs burst fromthe feathered pods of their bodies, dandelionswhirl their blades upwards, from beneaththis decaying board a snakesidewinds, chained hidesmelling of reptile sex / the hensroll in the dust, squinting with bliss, frogbodiesbloat like bladders, contract, stringthe pond with living jellyeyes, can I be thisruthless? I plungemy hands and arms into the dirt,swim among stones and cutworms,come up rank as a fox,restless. Nights, while seedlingsdig near my headI dream of reconciliationswith those I have hurtunbearably, we move stilltouching over the greening fields, the futurewounds folded like seedsin our tender fingers, daysI go for vicious walks past the charredroadbed over the bashed stubbleadmiring the view, avoidingthose I have not hurtyet, apocalypse coiled in my tongue,it is spring, I am searchingfor the word:finishedfinishedso I can begin overagain, some yearI will take this word too far.
Margaret Atwood
brave love, dreamnot of staunching such strict flame, but come,lean to my wound; burn on, burn on.
Sylvia Plath
How do I learn to speakwhen silence is all I know?
Susie Clevenger
I like for you to be still: it is as though you are absentdistant and full of sorrow as though you had diedOne word then, one smile is enoughAnd I'm happy; happy that it's not true
Pablo Neruda
And tell me everything, tell chain by chain, and link by link, and step by step; sharpen the knives you kept hidden away, thrust them into my breast, into my hands, like a torrent of sunbursts, an Amazon of buried jaguars, and leave me cry: hours, days and years, blind ages, stellar centuries.
Pablo Neruda
Where had I heard this wind beforeChange like this to a deeper roar?What would it take my standing there for,Holding open a restive door,Looking down hill to a frothy shore?Summer was past and day was past.Somber clouds in the west were massed.Out in the porch's sagging floor,leaves got up in a coil and hissed,Blindly struck at my knee and missed.Something sinister in the toneTold me my secret must be known:Word I was in the house aloneSomehow must have gotten abroad,Word I was in my life alone,Word I had no one left but God.
Robert Frost
I have no life but this, To lead it here; Nor any death, but lest Dispelled from there; Nor tie to earths to come, Nor action new, Except through this extent, The realm of you.
Emily Dickinson
Put your mouthful of words away and come with me to watch the lilies open in such a field, growing there like yachts, slowly steering their petals without nurses or clocks.
Anne Sexton
Promise me no promises, So will I not promise you: Keep we both our liberties, Never false and never true: Let us hold the die uncast, Free to come as free to go: For I cannot know your past, And of mine what can you know?
Christina Rossetti
In pride, in reasoning pride, our error lies;All quit their sphere and rush into the skies.Pride still is aiming at the blest abodes, Men would be angels, angels would be gods. Aspiring to be gods, if angels fell, Aspiring to be angels, men rebel.
Alexander Pope
Is there a better method of departure by night than this quiet bon voyage with an open book, the sole companion who has come to see you off, to wave you into the dark waters beyond language?
Billy Collins
Love’s language starts, stops, starts; the right words flowing or clotting in the heart.
Carol Ann Duffy
O I never thought that joys would run away from boys,Or that boys would change their minds and forsake such summer joys;But alack I never dreamed that the world had other toys
John Clare
There are strange things done in the midnight sun By the men who moil for gold; The Arctic trails have their secret tales That would make your blood run cold;The Northern Lights have seen queer sights, But the queerest they ever did see Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge I cremated Sam McGee.
Robert W. Service
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down, 'Twas sad as sad could be; And we did speak only to break The silence of the sea! All in a hot and copper sky, The bloody Sun, at noon, Right up above the mast did stand, No bigger than the Moon. Day after day, day after day, We stuck, nor breath nor motion; As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
We real cool. WeLeft school. WeLurk late. WeStrike straight. WeSing sin. WeThin gin. WeJazz June. WeDie soon.
Gwendolyn Brooks
Where are we going? It’s not an issue of here or there. And if you ever feel you can’t take another step, imagine how you might feel to arrive, if not wiser, a little more aware how to inhabit the middle ground between misery and joy. Trudge on. In the higher regions, where the footing is unsure, to trudge is to survive.
Stephen Dunn
Stasis in darkness.Then the substanceless blue
Sylvia Plath
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
He [the poet] brings out the inner part of things and presents them to men in such a way that they cannot refuse but must accept it. But how the mere choice and rhythm of words should produce so magical an effect no one has yet been able to comprehend, and least of all the poets themselves.
Hilaire Belloc
I want to unfold.I don’t want to be folded anywhere,because where I am folded,there I am a lie.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Poetry led me by the hand out of madness.
Anne Sexton
Never fear the thing you feel-- Only by love is life made real
Sara Teasdale
[…] but she cannot make him eat, like you.
Warsan Shire
To wander solitary there:Two paradises ‘twere in oneTo live in paradise alone.
Andrew Marvell
You ask my love completest,As strong next year as now,The devil take you, sweetest,Ere I make aught such vow.Life is a masque that changes,A fig for constancy!No love at all were better,Than love which is not free.
Ernest Dowson
It is true that there is not enough beauty in the world. It is also true that I am not competent to restore it. Neither is there candor, and here I may be of some use.
Louise Glück
Sometimes in composition class, when I have been confronted by someone who simply cannot get the first word written on paper, I give the following advice: Say your essay into a tape recorder and then write it down.
Maria Mazziotti Gillan
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
Let me begin again as a speckof dust caught in the night windssweeping out to sea. Let me beginthis time knowing the world issalt water and dark clouds, the worldis grinding and sighing all night, and dawncomes slowly, and changes nothing.
Philip Levine
I believed even then that if I could transform my experience into poetry I would give it the value and dignity it did not begin to possess on its own. I thought too that if I could write about it I could come to understand it; I believed that if I could understand my life—or at least the part my work played in it—I could embrace it with some degree of joy, an element conspicuously missing from my life.
Philip Levine
But yester-night I prayed aloud In anguish and in agony, Up-starting from the fiendish crowd Of shapes and thoughts that tortured me: A lurid light, a trampling throng, Sense of intolerable wrong, And whom I scorned, those only strong! Thirst of revenge, the powerless will Still baffled, and yet burning still! Desire with loathing strangely mixed On wild or hateful objects fixed. Fantastic passions! maddening brawl! And shame and terror over all! Deeds to be hid which were not hid, Which all confused I could not know Whether I suffered, or I did: For all seemed guilt, remorse or woe, My own or others still the same Life-stifling fear, soul-stifling shame.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
It got so bad that Al thoughtmaybe it washimso he went to a shrinkand askedand the shrink said,"you're one of the sanest menI've ever met."poor Al.that made him feelworse than ever.
Charles Bukowski
I hear they make greeting cards now to thank your therapist... for NOTHING
Casey Renee Kiser
The artistic reward for refuting the received national tradition is liberation. The price is homelessness. Interior exile.
C.D. Wright
You bear a sword and shield, remind meof her labor, her stoning gaze. What beastwill your blade free next? What call will you loosefrom another woman's throat?
Donika Kelly
The books [poetry collections] may not sell, but neither are they given away or thrown away. They tend, more than other books, to fall apart in their owners’ hands. Not I suppose good news in a culture and economy built on obsolescence. But for a book to be loved this way and turned to this way for consolation and intense renewable excitement seems to me a marvel.
Louise Glück
He taught me to be a Da Vinci and I sit here, with his portraits waiting for him to returnI do not think he willIs that what it means to be humanto be all powerful, to build a temple to yourselfand leaveonly the walls to pray
Phil Kaye
I don’t need the facts. I’m a Pisces.
Phil Volatile
What do they think has happened, the old fools,To make them like this? Do they somehow supposeIt's more grown-up when your mouth hangs open and drools,And you keep on pissing yourself, and can't rememberWho called this morning? Or that, if they only chose,They could alter things back to when they danced all night,Or went to their wedding, or sloped arms some September?Or do they fancy there's really been no change,And they've always behaved as if they were crippled or tight,Or sat through days of thin continuous dreamingWatching the light move? If they don't (and they can't), it's strange;tttWhy aren't they screaming?
Philip Larkin
I remember yoursaying: "make itor break it."neither happened anditwon't.
Charles Bukowski
I wait on my fix:I am a poetry junkie.
Charles Bukowski
Then there's the twoof us. This wordis far too short for us, it has onlyfour letters, too sparseto fill those deep barevacuums between the starsthat press on us with their deafness.It's not love we don't wishto fall into, but that fear.This word is not enough but it willhave to do. It's a singlevowel in this metallicsilence, a mouth that saysO again and again in wonderand pain, a breath, a fingergrip on a cliffside. You canhold on or let go.
Margaret Atwood
Without the wetness of your love, the fragrance of your water, or the trickling sounds of your voice ― I shall always feel thirsty.
Suzy Kassem
FRUITS AND NUTSKeep jumping around them like monkeys.The clones,Commercialized zombies,And the TV junkies.Keep throwing berries,Twigs,And nuts at them.Until they wake upTo see what's up And figure out whyWe're laughing at 'em.
Suzy Kassem
Our Beasts and our Thieves and our ChattelsHave weight for good or for ill;But the Poor are only His image,His presence, His word, His will; -And so Lazarus lies at our doorstepAnd Dives neglects him still.
Adelaide Anne Procter
My vegetable love will growVaster than empires, and more slow.
Andrew Marvell
Streets paved with opal sadness,Lead me counterclockwise, to pockets of joy,And jazz.
Bob Kaufman
Snub end of a dismal year, deep in the dwarf orchard, The sky with its undercoat of blackwash and point stars,I stand in the dark and answer toMy life, this shirt I want to take off,which is on fire . . .
Charles Wright
My name used to be in the papers dailyAs having dined somewhere,Or traveled somewhere,Or rented a house in Paris,Where I entertained the nobility.I was forever eating or traveling,Or taking the cure at Baden-Baden.Now I am here to do honorTo Spoon River, here beside the family whence I sprang.No one cares now where I dined,Or lived, or whom I entertained,Or how often I took the cure at Baden-Baden!
Edgar Lee Masters
And round about there is a rabbleOf the filthy, sturdy, unkillable infants of the very poor.They shall inherit the earth.
Ezra Pound