Quotes by Poets - Page 431

And in the end,she left a scarand I knew that washow she wanted tobe remembered.She wanted to leaveher mark in theworldwithout gettingher heart tooattached to it.
Robert M. Drake
There have been times I've felt so much art in my soul I grew sick of artists.
Criss Jami
His vision, from the constantly passing bars,has grown so weary that it cannot holdanything else. It seems to him there area thousand bars, and behind the bars, no world.As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,the movement of his powerful soft stridesis like a ritual dance around a centerin which a mighty will stands paralyzed.Only at times, the curtain of the pupilslifts, quietly. An image enters in,rushes down through the tense, arrested muscles,plunges into the heart and is gone.
Rainer Maria Rilke
I came here to be for all and with all,and what I do today in my solitudewill be echoed tomorrow by the multitude.What I say now with one heartwill be said tomorrow by thousands of hearts...
Kahlil Gibran
i laced my shoes with sorrowand walked a weary roaddead end streetsdon't come undonewith double knots wing tipped shoesthat walk on airthrough vacant lots
Saul Williams
I drink from a small spring, my thirst exceeds the ocean.
Adam Zagajewski
Pensar incomoda como andar à chuvaQuando o vento cresce e parece que chove mais.
Alberto Caeiro
[Short Talk on Sylvia Plath] Did you see her mother on television? She said plain, burned things. She said I thought it an excellent poem but it hurt me. She did not say jungle fear. She did not say jungle hatred wild jungle weeping chop it back chop it. She said self-government she said end of the road. She did not say humming in the middle of the air what you came for chop.
Anne Carson
Shit is disgusting and horrible. A lot of people and things are disgusting and horrible, and I want to be a nice person, and I am. When you are speaking about rejected people whose suffering makes them disgusting, you are speaking about shit. I do not mean that we should all eat shit and love what we can’t help rejecting. I am saying that I tried to do that, just to see if it was possible.It’s not possible.
Ariana Reines
It was not like everyone had said.Not like being needed,or needing; not desperate;it did not whisperthat I'd come to harm. I didn't losemy head. No, I was notgoing to leap from a greatheight and flapmy wings.It was in factthe opposite of flying:it contained the wishto be toppled, to be on the floor,the ground, anywhere I mightlie down. . . .On my back, and you on me.
Deborah Garrison
...if you do not even understand what words say, how can you expect to pass judgement on what words conceal?
H.D.
Your friends, and your associates, and the people around you, and the environment that you live in, and the speakers around you - the speakers around you - and the communicators around you, are the poetry makers.If your mother tells you stories, she is a poetry maker.If your father says stories, he is a poetry maker.If your grandma tells you stories, she is a poetry maker.And that’s who forms our poetics.
Juan Felipe Herrera
...few young poets [are] testing their poems against the ear. They're writing for the page, and the page, let me tell you, is a cold bed.
Stanley Kunitz
My heart was full of softening showers,I used to swing like this for hours,I did not care for war or death,I was glad to draw my breath.
Stevie Smith
Poetry is the scholar's art.
Wallace Stevens
Title: Blue Light Lounge Sutra For The Performance Poets At Harold Park Hotelthe need gotta beso deep words can'tanswer simple questionsall night long notesstumble off the tongue& color the air indigoso deep fragments of gut& flesh cling to the songyou gotta get into itso deep salt crystalizes on eyelashesthe need gotta beso deep you can vomit up ghosts& not feel brokentill you are no morethan a half ounce of goldin painful brightnessyou gotta get into itblow that saxophoneso deep all the sex & dope in this worldcan't erase your needto howl against the skythe need gotta beso deep you can'tjust wiggle your hips& rise up out of itchaos in the cosmosmodern man in the pepperpotyou gotta get hookedinto every hungry grooveso deep the bomb lockedin rust opens like a fistinto it into it so deeprhythm is pre-memorythe need gotta be basicanimal need to see& know the terrorwe are made of honeycause if you wanna dancethis boogie be readyto let the devil use your headfor a drum
Yusef Komunyakaa
A poet must discover that it’s his own story that is true, even if the truth is small indeed.
Jim Harrison
He feeds upon her face by day and night,And she with true kind eyes looks back on him,Fair as the moon and joyful as the light:Not wan with waiting, not with sorrow dim;Not as she is, but was when hope shone bright;Not as she is, but as she fills his dream.
Christina Rossetti
There is nothinggoing on. I took nothingyou wanted. You can'thave it back.
Daphne Gottlieb
What happens to a dream deferred?
Langston Hughes
I opened my veins. Unstoppablylife spurts out with no remedy.Now I set out bowls and plates.Every bowl will be shallow.Every plate will be small.And overflowing their rims,into the black earth, to nourishthe rushes unstoppablywithout cure, gushespoetry ...
Marina Tsvetaeva
Higgledy piggledy, my black hen,She lays eggs for gentlemen.Gentlemen come every dayTo count what my black hen doth lay.If perchance she lays too many,They fine my hen a pretty penny;If perchance she fails to lay,The gentlemen a bonus pay.Mumbledy pumbledy, my red cow,She’s cooperating now.At first she didn’t understandThat milk production must be planned;She didn’t understand at firstShe either had to plan or burst,But now the government reportsShe’s giving pints instead of quarts.Fiddle de dee, my next-door neighbors,They are giggling at their labors.First they plant the tiny seed,Then they water, then they weed,Then they hoe and prune and lop,They they raise a record crop,Then they laugh their sides asunder,And plow the whole caboodle under.Abracadabra, thus we learnThe more you create, the less you earn.The less you earn, the more you’re given,The less you lead, the more you’re driven,The more destroyed, the more they feed,The more you pay, the more they need,The more you earn, the less you keep,And now I lay me down to sleep.I pray the Lord my soul to takeIf the tax-collector hasn’t got it before I wake.
Ogden Nash
Song of myselfSmile O voluptuous cool-breath'd earth! Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees! Earth of departed sunset--earth of the mountains misty-topt! Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon just tinged with blue! Earth of shine and dark mottling the tide of the river! Earth of the limpid gray of clouds brighter and clearer for my sake! Far-swooping elbow'd earth--rich apple-blossom'd earth! Smile, for your lover comes.
Walt Whitman
They kept me in a cage for too long because now every room I am standing in is just another cell.
Raegan Butcher
I will reveal you who I am. I am your reflection.
Santosh Kalwar
Wherever we go we do harm, forgivingourselves as wheels do cement for wearingeach other out. We set this houseon fire, forgetting that we live within.(from "To a Meadowlark," for M.L. Smoker)
Jim Harrison
Poetry is the language of the soul;Poetic Prose, the language of my heart.Each line must flow as in a song,and strike a chord that rings forever.To me, words are music!
Lori R. Lopez
You are my brother and I love you. I love you worshipping in your church, kneeling in your temple, and praying in your mosque. You and I and all are children of one religion, for the varied paths of religion are but the fingers of the loving hand of the Supreme Being, extended to all, offering completeness of spirit to all, anxious to receive all.
Kahlil Gibran
Much Madness is Divinest Sense, to a Discerning Eye....
Emily Dickinson
I write in order to comprehend, not to express myself.
Anna Kamieńska
That night we made love "the real way" which we had not yet attemptedalthough married six months.Big mystery. No one knew where to put their leg and to this day I'm not surewe got it right.He seemed happy. You're like Venice he said beautifully.Early next dayI wrote a short talk ("On Defloration") which he stole and had publishedin a small quarterly magazine.Overall this was a characteristic interaction between us.Or should I say ideal.Neither of us had ever seen Venice.
Anne Carson
A poet could kill the dead.
Cameron Conaway
As she bends for a Kleenex in the dark, I am thinking of other girls: the girl I loved who fell in love with a lion--she lost her head over it--we just necked a lot; of the girl who fell in love with the tightrope, got addicted to getting high wired and nothing else was enough; all the beautiful, damaged women who have come through my life and I wonder what would have happened if I'd met them sooner, what they were like before they were so badly wounded. All this time I thought I'd been kissing, but maybe I'm always doing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, kissing dead girls in hopes that the heart will start again. Where there's breath, I've heard, there's hope.
Daphne Gottlieb
The new world is as yetbehind the veil of destinyIn my eyes, howeverits dawn has been unveiled
Muhammad Iqbal
All the new thinking is about loss. In this it resembles all the old thinking
Robert Hass
Why are there trees I never walk under but large and melodious thoughts descend upon me?
Walt Whitman
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
We must listen to poets.
Gaston Bachelard
I love my love with a b because she is peculiar.
Gertrude Stein
My best testimonies are from the times I thought I couldn't survive.
Tanya R. Liverman
I think it was Milosz, the Polish poet, who when he lay in a doorway and watched the bullets lifting the cobbles out of the street beside him realised that most poetry is not equipped for life in a world where people actually die. But some is.
Ted Hughes
A way of using words to say things which could not possibly be said in any other way, things which in a sense do not exist till they are born … in poetry.
Cecil Day-Lewis
Il était tard; ainsi qu'une médaille neuveLa pleine lune s'étalait,Et la solennité de la nuit, comme un fleuveSur Paris dormant ruisselait.
Charles Baudelaire
. . . We love fog becauseit shifts old anomalies into the elementssurrounding them. It gives relief from a way of seeing
Eavan Boland
For you may palm upon us new for old:All, as they say, that glitters, is not gold.
John Dryden
The Old FoolsWhat 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 droolsAnd 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 light move ? If they don't (and they can't), it's strange:Why aren't they screaming ?At death, you break up: the bits that were youStart speeding away from each other for everWith no one to see. It's only oblivion, true: We had it before, but then it was going to end,And was all the time merging with a unique endeavourTo bring to bloom the million-petalled flowerOf being here. Next time you can't pretendThere'll be anything else. And these are the first signs:Not knowing how, not hearing who, the powerOf choosing gone. Their looks show that they're for it:Ash hair, toad hands, prune face dried into lines-How can they ignore it ?Perhaps being old is having lighted roomsInside your head, and people in them, acting.People you know, yet can't quite name; each loomsLike a deep loss restored, from known doors turning, Setting down a Iamp, smiling from a stair, extractingA known book from the shelves; or sometimes onlyThe rooms themselves, chairs and a fire burning,The blown bush at the window, or the sun' sFaint friendliness on the wall some lonelyRain-ceased midsummer evening. That is where they live:Not here and now, but where all happened once.This is why they giveAn air of baffled absence, trying to be thereYet being here. For the rooms grow farther, leavingIncompetent cold, the constant wear and tearOf taken breath, and them crouching belowExtinction' s alp, the old fools, never perceivingHow near it is. This must be what keeps them quiet.The peak that stays in view wherever we goFor them is rising ground. Can they never tellWhat is dragging them back, and how it will end ? Not at night?Not when the strangers come ? Never, throughoutThe whole hideous inverted childhood? Well,We shall find out.
Philip Larkin
As a poet and as a mathematician, he would reason well; as a mere mathematician, he could not have reasoned at all.
Edgar Allan Poe
A skillful literary artist has constructed a tale. If wise, he has not fashioned his thoughts to accommodate his incidents; but having conceived, with deliberate care, a certain unique or single effect to be wrought out, he then invents as may best aid him in establishing this preconceived effect. If his very initial sentence tend not to the outbringing of this effect, then he has failed in his first step. In the whole composition there should be no words written, of which the tendency, direct or indirect, is not to the one pre-established design. And by such means, with such care and skill, a picture is at length painted which leaves in the mind of him who contemplates it with a kindred art, a sense of the fullest satisfaction. The idea of the tale has been presented unblemished because undisturbed: and this is an end unattainable by the novel. Undue brevity is just as exceptionable here as in the poem; but undue length is yet more to be avoided.
Edgar Allan Poe
If I bet on humanity, I'd never cash a ticket.
Charles Bukowski
Is Bliss then, such Abyss,I must not put my foot amissFor fear I spoil my shoe? I'd rather suit my footThan save my Boot --For yet to buy another Pairis possible,At any store -- But Bliss, is sold just once.The Patent lostNone buy it any more --
Emily Dickinson
Open wide the mind's cage-door,She'll dart forth, and cloudward soar.
John Keats
Weary of myself, and sick of asking What I am, and what I ought to be, At this vessel's prow I stand, which bears me Forwards, forwards, o'er the starlit sea.
Matthew Arnold
Remembrance and reflection how allied!What thin partitions Sense from Thought divide!
Alexander Pope
The music is a vibration in the brain rather than the ear.
Amy Clampitt
So all night long the storm roared on:The morning broke without a sun;In tiny spherule traced with linesOf Nature’s geometric signs,In starry flake, and pellicle,All day the hoary meteor fell;And, when the second morning shone,We looked upon a world unknown,On nothing we could call our own.Around the glistening wonder bentThe blue walls of the firmament,No cloud above, no earth below,—A universe of sky and snow!
John Greenleaf Whittier
That's what I want, that kind of recklessness where the poem is even ahead of you. It's like riding a horse that's a little too wild for you, so there's this tension between what you can do and what the horse decides it's going to do.
Li-Young Lee
There is such a shelter in each other.
Nick Laird
What is madness but nobility of the soul at odds with circumstance.
Theodore Roethke
I bleed myself to be your drink:Is not the blood of poets—ink?
William Soutar
Every good poem asks a question, and every good poet asks every question.
Dorianne Laux