Quotes by Poets - Page 432

I was the first Chicano to write in complete sentences.
Gary Soto
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
The fact that Iam writing to youin Englishalready falsifies what Iwanted to tell you.My subject:how to explain to youthat I don't belong to Englishthough I belong nowhere else,if not herein English.
Gustavo Perez Firmat
The Ogre does what ogres can,Deeds quite impossible for Man,But one prize is beyond his reach:The Ogre cannot master speech.About a subjugated plain,Among it's desperate and slain,The Ogre stalks with hands on hips,While drivel gushes from his lips.
W.H. Auden
But to go to school in a summer morn,O! It drives all joy away;Under a cruel eye outworn,The little ones spend the dayIn sighing and dismay.
William Blake
Most people ignore most poetry because poetry ignores most people.
Adrian Mitchell
Catch from the board of beauty/ Such careless crumbs as fall.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
don't wait for the man standing in the snowto cut off his arm help him now
Ikkyu
Into the nothingness of scorn and noise, Into the living sea of waking dreams, Where there is neither sense of life or joys, But the vast shipwreck of my life’s esteems; Even the dearest that I loved the best Are strange—nay, rather, stranger than the rest.
John Clare
Gretel in Darkness:This is the world we wanted.All who would have seen us deadare dead. I hear the witch's crybreak in the moonlight through a sheetof sugar: God rewards.Her tongue shrivels into gas....Now, far from women's armsAnd memory of women, in our father's hutwe sleep, are never hungry.Why do I not forget?My father bars the door, bars harmfrom this house, and it is years.No one remembers. Even you, my brother,summer afternoons you look at me as thoughyou meant to leave,as though it never happened.But I killed for you. I see armed firs,the spires of that gleaming kiln--Nights I turn to you to hold mebut you are not there.Am I alone? Spieshiss in the stillness, Hanselwe are there still, and it is real, real,that black forest, and the fire in earnest.
Louise Glück
What did you think, that joy / was some slight thing?
Mark Doty
There is risk and truth to yourselves and the world before you.
Seamus Heaney
Outside the youth center, between the liquor storeand the police station,a little dogwood tree is losing its mind;overflowing with blossomfoam,like a sudsy mug of beer;like a bride ripping off her clothes,dropping snow white petals to the ground in clouds,so Nature’s wastefulness seems quietly obscene.It’s been doing that all week:making beauty,and throwing it away,and making more.
Tony Hoagland
Love does not claim materialistic possession of any kind, it yields complete freedom.
Santosh Kalwar
From the mind which thinks to die, let my soul sleep tonight.
Santosh Kalwar
The pure playfulness of certain wholly whimsical portions of (Charles) Cros’s work should not obscure the fact that at the center of some of his most beautiful poems a revolver is leveled straight at us.
André Breton
The Pekes and the Pollicles, everyone knows, Are proud and implacable, passionate foes;It is always the same, wherever one goes.And the Pugs and the Poms, although most people saythat they do not like fighting, will often displayEvery symptom of wanting to join in the fray.And theyBark bark bark bark bark barkUntil you can hear them all over the park.
T.S Eliot
It's not what you go through that makes you strong: it is how you handle the situation that gives you strength.
Tanya R. Liverman
Say this city has ten million souls,Some are living in mansions, some are living in holes:Yet there’s no place for us, my dear, yet there’s no place for us.
W.H. Auden
Immortal amarant, a flower which onceIn paradise, fast by the tree of life,Began to bloom; but soon for man's offenceTo heaven removed, where first it grew, there grows,And flowers aloft, shading the fount of life,And where the river of bliss through midst of heavenRolls o'er elysian flowers her amber stream:With these that never fade the spirits electBind their resplendent locks.
John Milton
The Author To Her BookThou ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain,Who after birth did'st by my side remain,Till snatcht from thence by friends, less wise than true,Who thee abroad exposed to public view,Made thee in rags, halting to th' press to trudge,Where errors were not lessened (all may judge).At thy return my blushing was not small,My rambling brat (in print) should mother call.I cast thee by as one unfit for light,The visage was so irksome in my sight,Yet being mine own, at length affection wouldThy blemishes amend, if so I could.I washed thy face, but more defects I saw,And rubbing off a spot, still made a flaw.I stretcht thy joints to make thee even feet,Yet still thou run'st more hobbling than is meet.In better dress to trim thee was my mind,But nought save home-spun cloth, i' th' house I find.In this array, 'mongst vulgars may'st thou roam.In critic's hands, beware thou dost not come,And take thy way where yet thou art not known.If for thy father askt, say, thou hadst none;And for thy mother, she alas is poor,Which caused her thus to send thee out of door.
Anne Bradstreet
These Songs are not meant to be understood, you understand.They are only meant to terrify & comfort.
John Berryman
I am waiting for the war to be fought which will make the world safe for anarchy
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
I will meet you on the nape of your neck one day, on the surface of intention, word becoming act.We will breathe into each other the high mountain tales, where the snows come from, where the waters begin.”-In the yellow time of pollen
Luke Davies
... imaginary gardens with real toads in them ...... if you demand on one hand,the raw material of poetry inall its rawness andthat which is on the other handgenuine, then you are interested in poetry.
Marianne Moore
How you die out in me:down to the lastworn-out knot of breathyou're there, with a splinter of life.
Paul Celan
Writing poetry is talking to oneself; yet it is a mode of talking to oneself in which the self disappears; and the product's something that, though it may not be for everybody, is about everybody.
Richard Wilbur
The way through the worldIs more difficult to find than the way beyond it.
Wallace Stevens
All a poet can do today is warn.
Wilfred Owen
Publishing a book of poetry is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo.
Don Marquis
Only poetry isn't shit.
Roberto Bolaño
I shivered in thosesolitudeswhen I heardthe voiceofthe saltin the desert.
Pablo Neruda
To see the Summer SkyIs Poetry, though never in a Book it lie—True Poems flee—
Emily Dickinson
ld heads forgetful of their sins,Old, learned, respectable bald headsEdit and annotate the linesThat young men, tossing on their beds,Rhymed out in love’s despairTo flatter beauty’s ignorant ear.They’ll cough in the ink to the world’s end;Wear out the carpet with their shoesEarning respect; have no strange friend;If they have sinned nobody knows.Lord, what would they sayShould their Catullus walk that way?
W.B. Yeats
Not in the clamor of the crowded street,Not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng,But in ourselves, are triumph and defeat.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
In a pine tree,A few yards away from my window sill,A brilliant blue jay is springing up and down, up and down,On a branch.I laugh, as I see him abandon himselfTo entire delight, for he knows as well as I doThat the branch will not break.
James Wright
I sleep with thee, and wake with thee,And yet thou are not there;I fill my arms with thoughts of thee,And press the common air.
John Clare
I long for scenes where man hath never trod A place where woman never smiled or wept There to abide with my Creator, God, And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept, Untroubling and untroubled where I lie The grass below—above the vaulted sky.
John Clare
Language has not the power to speak what love inditesThe soul lies buried in the Ink that writes
John Clare
I think here I will leave you. It has come to seemthere is no perfect ending.Indeed, there are infinite endings.Or perhaps, once one begins,there are only endings.
Louise Glück
I don’t need your praiseto survive. I was here first, before you were here, beforeyou ever planted a garden.And I’ll be here when only the sun and moonare left, and the sea, and the wide field.I will constitute the field.
Louise Glück
evet kimsesizdik ama umudumuz vardıüç ev görsek bir şehir sanıyorduküç güvercin görsek meksika geliyordu aklımızacaddelerde gezmekten hoşlanıyorduk akşamlarıkadınların kocalarını aramasını seviyorduksonra şarap içiyorduk kırmızı yahut beyazbilir bilmez geyikli gece yüzünden
Turgut Uyar
What is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare.No time to stand beneath the boughsAnd stare as long as sheep or cows...
W.H. Davies
So this is what I amPondering his eyes that could notConceive that I was a creature to run fromI who have always believed too much in words
W.S. Merwin
Surprised by joy- impatient as the WindI turned to share the transport-- Oh! with whomBut thee, deep buried in the silent tomb,That spot which no vicissitude can find?Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind--But how could I forget thee? Through what power,Even for the least division of an hour,Have I been so beguiled as to be blindTo my most grievous loss? -- That thought's returnWas the worst pang that sorrow ever bore,Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn,Knowing my heart's best treasure was no more;That neither present time, nor years unbornCould to my sight that heavenly face restore.
William Wordsworth
during my worst timeson the park benchesin the jailsor living withwhoresI always had this certaincontentment-I wouldn't call ithappiness-it was more of an innerbalancethat settled forwhatever was occuringand it helped in thefactoriesand when relationshipswent wrongwith thegirls.it helpedthrough thewars and thehangoversthe backalley fightsthehospitals.to awaken in a cheap roomin a strange city andpull up the shade-this was the craziest kind ofcontentmentand to walk across the floorto an old dresser with acracked mirror-see myself, ugly,grinning at it all.what matters most ishow well youwalk through thefire.
Charles Bukowski
Xs and OsLove is a gameof tic-tac-toe,constantly waiting,for the next x or o.
Lang Leav
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
The same hot lightning that burns your blood with passion–– cools your fears with peace.
Aberjhani
O Stunden in der Kindheit,da hinter den Figuren mehr als nurVergangnes war und vor uns nicht die Zukunft.
Rainer Maria Rilke
How far away the stars seem, and how farIs our first kiss, and ah, how old my heart!
W.B. Yeats
Almost none of the poetries I admire stick to their labels, native or adopted ones. Rather, they are vagrant in their identifications. Tramp poets, there you go, a new label for those with unstable allegiances.
C.D. Wright
E andando nel sole che abbagliasentire con triste meravigliacom'è tutta la vita e il suo travaglioin questo seguitare una muragliache ha in cima cocci aguzzi di bottiglia.
Eugenio Montale
At five in the afternoon. It was exactly five in the afternoon. A boy brought the white sheet at five in the afternoon. A frail of lime ready prepared at five in the afternoon. The rest was death, and death alone
Federico García Lorca
My Papa's Waltz:The whiskey on your breathCould make a small boy dizzy;But I hung on like death:Such waltzing was not easy.We romped until the pansSlid from the kitchen shelf;My mother's countenanceCould not unfrown itself.The hand that held my wristWas battered on one knuckle;At every step you missedMy right ear scraped a buckle.You beat time on my headWith a palm caked hard by dirt,Then waltzed me off to bedStill clinging to your shirt.
Theodore Roethke
After the leaves have fallen, we returnTo a plain sense of things. It is as ifWe had come to an end of the imagination,Inanimate in an inert savoir.
Wallace Stevens
A pear should come to the table popped with juice,Ripened in warmth and served in warmth. On termsLike these, autumn beguiles the fatalist.
Wallace Stevens
Here the frailest leaves of me and yet my strongest lasting, Here I shade and hide my thoughts, I myself do not expose them, And yet they expose me more than all my other poems
Walt Whitman
The busybody (banned as sexist, demeaning to older women) who lives next door called my daughter a tomboy (banned as sexist) when she climbed the jungle (banned; replaced with "rain forest") gym. Then she had the nerve to call her an egghead and a bookworm (both banned as offensive; replaced with "intellectual") because she read fairy (banned because suggests homosexuality; replace with "elf") tales.I'm tired of the Language Police turning a deaf ear (banned as handicapism) to my complaints. I'm no Pollyanna (banned as sexist) and will not accept any lame (banned as offensive; replace with "walks with a cane") excuses at this time. (banned as ethnocentric; replace with "Doctrine" or "Belief"), why can't my daughter play stickball (banned as regional or ethnic bias) on boy's night out (banned as sexist)? Why can't she build a snowman (banned, replace with "snow person") without that fanatic (banned as ethnocentric; replace with "believer," "follower," or "adherent") next door telling her she's going to hell (banned; replaced with "heck" or "darn")?Do you really think this is what the Founding Fathers (banned as sexist; replace with "the Founders" or "the Framers") had in mind? That we can't even enjoy our Devil (banned)-ed ham sandwiches in peace? I say put a stop to this cult (banned as ethnocentric) of PC old wives' tales (banned as sexist; replace with "folk wisdom") and extremist (banned as ethnocentric; replace with "believer," "follower," or "adherent") conservative duffers (banned as demeaning to older men).As an heiress (banned as sexist; replace with "heir") to the first amendment, I feel that only a heretic (use with caution when comparing religions) would try to stop American vernacular from flourishing in all its inspirational (banned as patronizing when referring to a person with disabilities) splendor.
Denise Duhamel
Then others for breath of words respect,Me for my dumb thoughts, speaking in effect.
William Shakespeare