Quotes by Poets - Page 429

Gather ye rose-buds while ye may,Old Time is still a-flying;And this same flower that smiles today,tTomorrow will be dying.
Robert Herrick
To be loved is all I need, And whom I love, I love indeed.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
This is definitely / for the brothers / who ain't here.
Willie Perdomo
Door of passage to the other side, the soul frees itself in stride.
Jim Morrison
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
I never paid any attention to people who told me to go out and live. I belonged always to whatever was far from me and to whatever I could never be. Anything that was not mine, however base, always seemed to me to be full of poetry. The only thing I ever loved was pure nothingness.
Fernando Pessoa
When the heart stops oozing blood & the outpouring is clear as water (so to speak) then you know you've turned the corner & will be well.When you look inward & all pathwaysare no longer dark but clearly lighted& shine like transparent drinking strawsthen you know you'll find your way alone.When the gray morning has nothing to do with you & doesn't weigh you downlike a heavy blanket, then you knowthat moving will be easy again and your body will flow through timelike the river it really is, smooth & deep.no rocks, no shallows to smash or catch you,keep you from moving on.When the heart slowsto its normal rhythm and the beautyof birdsong at dawn doesn't make you cry because you are alone listening, then you know that everything has happened that is going to for now, and you can get on withyour life & everything about it that was yours alone and always finer thananyone could ever imagine it would bewithout him.
Grace Butcher
At any moment, you know, your manufactured cool could blow.
Nicole Blackman
Cansado,sobre todo,de estar siempre conmigo,de hallarme cada día,cuando termina el sueño,allí, donde me encuentre,con las mismas naricesy con las mismas piernas...
Oliverio Girondo
A word is elegy to what it signifies.
Robert Haas
Since when," he asked,"Are the first line and last line of any poemWhere the poem begins and ends?
Seamus Heaney
Let be be finale of seem.The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
Wallace Stevens
She tells me about dreams. She says my dreams are helium and balloons, and I've made the mistake of letting go a few to many times, but I still got this one. Tied around my finger like a wedding ring because even though I don't believe in marriages, I'm gonna bring this one home.
Shane L. Koyczan
I will learn your anger. I will lick your sadness.I will feast on your hunger.
Caitlyn Siehl
Criticism is like politics: if you don't make your own you are by default accepting the status quo and are finally yourself responsible for whatever the status quo does to you.
Annie Finch
I don't like a kind of workshop that is about editing--I don't want to sit there and be an editor. I don't want to tell someone how to "fix" a poem.
Natasha Trethewey
As she laughed I was aware of becoming involved in her laughter and being part of it, until her teeth were only accidental stars with a talent for squad-drill.
T.S Eliot
This is the creature there has never been.They never knew it, and yet, none the less,they loved the way it moved, its suppleness,its neck, its very gaze, mild and serene.Not there, because they loved it, it behavedas though it were. They always left some space.And in that clear unpeopled space they savedit lightly reared its head, with scarce a traceof not being there. They fed it, not with corn,but only with the possibilityof being. And that was able to confersuch strength, its brow put forth a horn. One horn.within the silver mirror and in her.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Therefore, since the world has stillMuch good, but much less good than ill,And while the sun and moon endureLuck's a chance, but trouble's sure,I'd face it as a wise man would,And train for ill and not for good.
A.E. Housman
If what we need to dream, to move our spirits most deeply and directly toward and through promise, is discounted as a luxury, then we give up the core -- the fountain -- of our power, our womanness; we give up the future of our worlds. (From "Poetry is Not a Luxury")
Audre Lorde
Poetry: three mismatched shoes at the entrance of a dark alley.
Charles Simic
In their effort to divorce language and experience, deconstructionist critics remind me of middle-class parents who do not allow their children to play in the street.
Charles Simic
I have to live with myself and so, I want to be fit for myself to know.
Edgar A. Guest
One way poetry connects is across time. . . . Some echo of a writer's physical experience comes into us when we read her poem.
Jane Hirshfield
When I throw back my head and howlPeople (women mostly) sayBut you've always done what you want, You always get your way- A perfectly vile and foulInversion of all that's been.What the old ratbags meanIs I've never done what I don't.So the shit in the shuttered chateauWho does his five hundred wordsThen parts out the rest of the dayBetween bathing and booze and birdsIs far off as ever, but soIs that spectacled schoolteaching sod(Six kids, and the wife in pod, And her parents coming to stay)...Life is an immobile, locked, Three-handed struggle betweenYour wants, the world's for you, and (worse)The unbeatable slow machineThat brings what you'll get. Blocked, They strain round a hollow stasisOf havings-to, fear, faces.Days sift down it constantly. Years.--The Life with the Hole in It
Philip Larkin
Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beastie,O, what a panic's in thy breastie!
Robert Burns
We are all old-timers,each of us holds a locked razor.
Robert Lowell
And I or you pocketless of a dime, may purchase the pick of the earth.
Walt Whitman
Danse Russe If I when my wife is sleeping and the baby and Kathleen are sleeping and the sun is a flame-white disc in silken mists above shining trees,-- if I in my north room dance naked, grotesquely before my mirror waving my shirt round my head and singing softly to myself: "I am lonely, lonely. I was born to be lonely, I am best so!" If I admire my arms, my face, my shoulders, flanks, buttocks against the yellow drawn shades,-- Who shall say I am not the happy genius of my household?
William Carlos Williams
A writer is not so much someone who has something to say as he is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things he would not have thought of if he had not started to say them.
William Stafford
Every poem I write falls short in some important way. But I go on trying to write the one that won’t.
Dorianne Laux
O rose, you look sick.O rose, wake up and sing.
Santosh Kalwar
I've given offense by saying I'd as soon write free verse as play tennis with the net down.
Robert Frost
But for us the road unfurls itself, we don't stop walking, we know there is far to go.
Denise Levertov
...what the Man-Moth fears most he must do..
Elizabeth Bishop
Poetry's work is the clarification and magnification of being.
Jane Hirshfield
Paris and HelenHe called her: golden dawnShe called him: the wind whistlesHe called her: heart of the skyShe called him: message bringerHe called her: mother of pearl barley woman, rice provider, millet basket, corn maid, flax princess, all-maker, weefShe called him: fawn, roebuck, stag, courage, thunderman, all-in-green, mountain strider keeper of forests, my-love-ridesHe called her: the tree isShe called him: bird dancingHe called her: who stands, has stood, will always standShe called him: arriverHe called her: the heart and the womb are similarShe called him: arrow in my heart.
Judy Grahn
Take the time to write. You can do your life's work in half an hour a day.
Robert Hass
And wonder, dread and warhave lingered in that landwhere loss and love in turnhave held the upper hand.
Simon Armitage
Poets to ComePOETS to come! orators, singers, musicians to come!Not to-day is to justify me, and answer what I am for;But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater than before known,Arouse! Arousefor you must justify meyou must answer.I myself but write one or two indicative words for the future,I but advance a moment, only to wheel and hurry back in the darkness.I am a man who, sauntering along, without fully stopping, turns a casual look upon you, and then averts his face,Leaving it to you to prove and define it,Expecting the main things from you.
Walt Whitman
Sufilere sohbet gerek Ahilere ahret gerek Mecnunlara Leyla gerek Bana seni gerek seni
Yunus Emre
He remembers which sisterI like least and askshow she is doing.(lines 9-11 of the poem 'Divorce')
Carrie Etter
that your power of commandwith simple language wasone of the magnificent things ofour century.(from the poem: result)
Charles Bukowski
The very essence of I is being killed by You.
Santosh Kalwar
A wind starts to blow, without feelings,A song falls in love, without singing,A life will begin in melodies of the strings,May you find all pleasure of the light,God bless, Warrior of Light!
Santosh Kalwar
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
In this quiet place on a quiet streetwhere no one ever finds usgently, lovingly, freedom gives back our pain.--from poem In a Quiet Place on a Quiet Street
Aberjhani
Impatience kills quickly.
Katerina Stoykova-Klemer
Maybe if I could slip into Sylvia's mind, sort out the spices in her rack, alphabetize them and dust them off. Maybe then I'd understand how it's the little things that pull you under.
Kelli Russell Agodon
And this gray spirit yearning in desireTo follow knowledge like a sinking star,Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
Alfred Tennyson
Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art--Not in lone splendour hung aloft the nightAnd watching, with eternal lids apart,Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite.
John Keats
Our friends through cables and computer screens are as real as the light and sound waves we alter through thought.
Belinda Subraman
Isn't joyful or painful this pain in which I rejoice
Fernando Pessoa
Ah, the freshness in the face of leaving a task undone!To be remiss is to be positively out in the country!What a refuge it is to be completely unreliable!I can breathe easier now that the appointments are behind me.I missed them all, through deliberate negligence,Having waited for the urge to go, which I knew wouldn’t come.I’m free, and against organized, clothed society.I’m naked and plunge into the water of my imagination.It’s too late to be at either of the two meetings where I should have been at the same time,Deliberately at the same time...No matter, I’ll stay here dreaming verses and smiling in italics.This spectator aspect of life is so amusing!I can’t even light the next cigarette... If it’s an action,It can wait for me, along with the others, in the nonmeeting called life.
Fernando Pessoa
The BALLPOINT PENGUINS, black and white, Do little else but write and write.Although they've nothing much to say, They write and write it anyway....
Jack Prelutsky
I have brushed my teeth.This day and I are even.
Vera Pavlova
Song of MyselfI have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the beginning and the end, But I do not talk of the beginning or the end. There was never any more inception than there is now, Nor any more youth or age than there is now, And will never be any more perfection than there is now, Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.
Walt Whitman
I have defined poetry as a 'passionate pursuit of the Real.
Czesław Miłosz
I searched for my own heartand long after I had lost my wayin the days trailing past with their foliagein the aloof sky blue with distanceI thought I'd find my heartwhere I'd kept your eyes two brown butterfliesand I saw the swallows swoopand shadows starlings
Ingrid Jonker
There is nothing like scrubbing toilets for a living to make you question the choices you have made in life.
Raegan Butcher