Quotes by Poets - Page 436

Sometimes it feels like someone else is wearing my body.
Warsan Shire
When composing a verse let there not be a hair's breath separating your mind from what you write; composition of a poem must be done in an instant, like a woodcutter felling a huge tree or a swordsman leaping at a dangerous enemy.
Bashō Matsuo
With heart at rest I climbed the citadel'sSteep height, and saw the city as from a tower,Hospital, brothel, prison, and such hells,Where evil comes up softly like a flower.Thou knowest, O Satan, patron of my pain,Not for vain tears I went up at that hour;But like an old sad faithful lecher, fainTo drink delight of that enormous trullWhose hellish beauty makes me young again.Whether thou sleep, with heavy vapors full,Sodden with day, or, new appareled, standIn gold-laced veils of evening beautiful,I love thee, infamous city! Harlots andHunted have pleasures of their own to give,The vulgar herd can never understand.
Charles Baudelaire
Ye are better than all the balladsThat ever were sung or said;For ye are living poems,And all the rest are dead.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
We must unlearn the constellations to see the stars.
Jack Gilbert
If our two loves be one, or, thou and I Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.
John Donne
I've had it with these cheap sons of bitches who claim they love poetry but never buy a book.
Kenneth Rexroth
Desire, loneliness, wind in the flowering almond—surely these are the great, the inexhaustible subjectsto which my predecessors apprenticed themselves.I hear them echo in my own heart, disguised as convention.
Louise Glück
Darling, do you rememberthe man you married? Touch me, remind me who I am.
Stanley Kunitz
The exceeding brightness of this early sunMakes me conceive how dark I have become.
Wallace Stevens
She was a Phantom of delightWhen first she gleam'd upon my sight;A lovely Apparition, sentTo be a moment's ornament:Her eyes as stars of twilight fair;Like twilight's, too, her dusky hair;But all things else about her drawnFrom May-time and the cheerful dawn;A dancing shape, an image gay,To haunt, to startle, and waylay.
William Wordsworth
Love is a shadow. How you lie and cry after it
Sylvia Plath
Someday you will name me, then gently place those burning holy roses in my hair.[Songs of Longing]
Rainer Maria Rilke
if everything happens that can't be done(and anything's righterthan bookscould plan)the stupidest teacher will almost guess(with a runskiparound we go yes)there's nothing as something as oneone hasn't a why or because or although(and buds know betterthan booksdon't grow)one's anything old being everything new(with a whatwhicharound we come who)one's everyanything soso world is a leaf so tree is a bough(and birds sing sweeterthan bookstell how)so here is away and so your is a my(with a downuparound again fly)forever was never till nownow i love you and you love me(and books are shutterthan bookscan be)and deep in the high that does nothing but fall(with a shouteacharound we go all)there's somebody calling who's wewe're anything brighter than even the sun(we're everything greaterthan booksmight mean)we're everanything more than believe(with a spinleapalive we're alive)we're wonderful one times one
E.E. Cummings
I wish I was either in your arms full of faith, or that a Thunder bolt would strike me.
John Keats
Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.
W.H. Auden
Here we go mother on the shipless ocean.Pity us, pity the ocean, here we go.
Anne Carson
It is difficult to write a paradiso when all the superficial indications are that you ought to write an apocalypse.
Ezra Pound
Of the many forms that silence takes, the most memorable is the dry husk of the cicada.
Jon Davis
before the gate --my walking stick's made a riverof melting snow
Kobayashi Issa
Armed I am with love. Disarmed I am.
Manuel Alegre
Sometimes he did not know if he slept or just thought about sleep.
Mark Strand
It is not our job to remain whole.We came to lose our leavesLike the trees, and be born again,Drawing up from the great roots.
Robert Bly
I have no doubt at all the Devil grins,As seas of ink I spatter. Ye gods, forgive my "literary" sins --The other kind don't matter.
Robert W. Service
For we cannot tarry here,We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger,We, the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend, Pioneers! O pioneers!
Walt Whitman
The eye--it cannot choose but see;We cannot bid the ear be still;Our bodies feel, where'er they be,Against or with our will.
William Wordsworth
To me, fair friend, you never can be old,For as you were when first your eye I ey'd, Such seems your beauty still.
William Shakespeare
But writing poems and letters doesn't seem to do much good.
Sylvia Plath
This is the Hour of Lead – Remembered, if outlived, As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow – First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go –
Emily Dickinson
Mine Enemy is growing old --I have at last Revenge --The Palate of the Hate departs --If any would avenge Let him be quick -- the Viand flits --It is a faded Meat --Anger as soon as fed is dead --'Tis starving makes it fat
Emily Dickinson
I sang in my chains like the sea
Dylan Thomas
the phantom of the man-who-would-understand,the lost brother, the twin ---for him did we leave our mothers,deny our sisters, over and over?did we invent him, conjure himover the charring log,nights, late, in the snowbound cabindid we dream or scry his facein the liquid embers,the man-who-would-dare-to-know-us?It was never the rapist:it was the brother, lost,the comrade/twin whose palmwould bear a lifeline like our own:decisive, arrowy,forked-lightning of insatiate desireIt was never the crude pestle, the blindramrod we were after:merely a fellow-creaturewith natural resources equal to our own.
Adrienne Rich
Love, our subject:we've trained it like ivy to our walls.
Adrienne Rich
We, all who live, haveA life that is livedAnd another life that is thought,And the only life we haveIt's the one that is dividedIn right or wrong.
Fernando Pessoa
won't you celebrate with mewhat i have shaped intoa kind of life? i had no model.born in babylonboth nonwhite and womanwhat did i see to be except myself?i made it uphere on this bridge betweenstarshine and clay,my one hand holding tightmy other hand; come celebratewith me that everydaysomething has tried to kill meand has failed.
Lucille Clifton
Far away, our dreams have nothing to do with what we do. The wind carries the night, and passes on, aimless.
Mahmoud Darwish
Be my lover between two wars waged in the mirror, she said.I don't want to return now to the fortress of my father's house.Take me to your vineyard.Let me meet your mother.Perfume me with basil water.Arrange me on silver dishes, comb me, imprison me in your name,let love kill me.
Mahmoud Darwish
I could not love thee, Dear, so much, Loved I not Honour more.
Richard Lovelace
Sometimes with one I love, I fill myself with rage, for fear I effuse unreturn'd love; But now I think there is no unreturn'd love—the pay is certain, one way or another; (I loved a certain person ardently, and my love was not return'd; Yet out of that, I have written these songs.)
Walt Whitman
I saw thee once - only once - years ago:I must not say how many - but not many.It was a July midnight; and from outA full-orbed moon, that, like thine own soul, soaring,Sought a precipitate pathway up through heaven,There fell a silvery-silken veil of light,With quietude, and sultriness, and slumber,Upon the upturn'd faces of a thousandRoses that grew in an enchanted garden,Where no wind dared stir, unless on tiptoe -Fell on the upturn'd faces of these rosesThat gave out, in return for the love-light,Their odorous souls in an ecstatic death -Fell on the upturn'd faces of these rosesThat smiled and died in the parterre, enchantedBy thee, and by the poetry of thy presence.Clad all in white, upon a violet bankI saw thee half reclining; while the moonFell upon the upturn'd faces of the roses,And on thine own, upturn'd - alas, in sorrow!Was it not Fate, that, on this July midnight -Was it not Fate, (whose name is also Sorrow,)That bade me pause before that garden-gate,To breathe the incense of those slumbering roses?No footsteps stirred: the hated world all slept,Save only thee and me. (Oh, Heaven! - oh, G**!How my heart beats in coupling those two words!)Save only thee and me. I paused - I looked -And in an instant all things disappeared.(Ah, bear in mind the garden was enchanted!)The pearly lustre of the moon went out:The mossy banks and the meandering paths,The happy flowers and the repining trees,Were seen no more: the very roses' odorsDied in the arms of the adoring airs.All - all expired save thee - save less than thou:Save only divine light in thine eyes -Save but the soul in thine uplifted eyes.I saw but them - they were the world to me.I saw but them - saw only them for hours -Saw only them until the moon went down.What wild heart-histories seemed to lie enwrittenUpon those crystalline, celestial spheres!How dark a wo! yet how sublime a hope!How silently serene a sea of pride!How daring an ambition! yet how deep -How fathomless a capacity for love!But now, at length, dear Dian sank from sight,Into a western couch of thunder-cloud;And thou, a ghost, amid the entombing treesDidst glide away. Only thine eyes remained.They would not go - they never yet have gone.Lighting my lonely pathway home that night,They have not left me (as my hopes have) since.They follow me - they lead me through the years.They are my ministers - yet I their slave.Their office is to illumine and enkindle -My duty, to be saved by their bright fire,And purified in their electric fire,And sanctified in their elysian fire.They fill my soul with Beauty (which is Hope,)And are far up in Heaven - the stars I kneel toIn the sad, silent watches of my night;While even in the meridian glare of dayI see them still - two sweetly scintillantVenuses, unextinguished by the sun!
Edgar Allan Poe
Birds are flyin' south for winter.Here's the Weird-Bird headin' north,Wings a-flappin', beak a-chatterin',Cold head bobbin' back 'n' forth.He says, "It's not that I like iceOr freezin' winds and snowy ground.It's just sometimes it's kind of niceTo be the only bird in town.
Shel Silverstein
Where do the words gowhen we have said them?
Margaret Atwood
The Soul selects her own Society—Then—shuts the Door—To her divine Majority—Present no more—Unmoved—she notes the Chariots—pausing—At her low Gate—Unmoved—an Emperor be kneelingUpon her Mat—I've known her—from an ample nation—Choose One—Then—close the Valves of her attention—Like Stone—
Emily Dickinson
I stepped from Plank to PlankSo slow and cautiouslyThe Stars about my Head I felt,About my Feet the Sea.I knew not but the nextWould be my final inch —This gave me that precarious GaitSome call Experience.
Emily Dickinson
You are her mother.Why did you not warn her,hold her like a rotting boatand tell her that men will not love herif she is covered in continents,if her teeth are small colonies,if her stomach is an islandif her thighs are borders?What man wants to lie downand watch the world burnin his bedroom?Your daughter ’s face is a small riot,her hands are a civil war,a refugee camp behind each ear,a body littered with ugly things.But God,doesn’t she wearthe world well?
Warsan Shire
Into my heart an air that killsFrom yon far country blows:What are those blue remembered hills,What spires, what farms are those?That is the land of lost content,I see it shining plain,The happy highways where I wentAnd cannot come again.
A.E. Housman
and I ask myself and you, which of our visions will claim uswhich will we claimhow will we go on livinghow will we touch, what will we knowwhat will we say to each other.
Adrienne Rich
All the black leathershe needsis the E-Z boy reclinerwhere her love is parkedwith one of his hands wrapped around a remote,the other, a bottle of beer.She's right. It's kinky.The way he doesn't look awayfrom the TV,as her head bobsin his laplike a fisherman's floaton a nature program,hecticwith the pacehis breath sets.His crotch swellsunder her mouth'sprowess. He's sucha sweethearthe waitsuntil thecommercialsto come.
Daphne Gottlieb
In the dark I rest,unready for the light which dawnsday after day,eager to be shared.Black silk, shelter me.I needmore of the night before I openeyes and heartto illumination. I must stillgrow in the dark like a rootnot ready, not ready at all.
Denise Levertov
I have been to lots of partiesand acted perfectly disgracefulbut I never actually collapsedoh Lana Turner we love you get up
Frank O'Hara
The JewelThere is this caveIn the air behind my bodyThat nobody is going to touch:A cloister, a silenceClosing around a blossom of fire.When I stand upright in the wind,My bones turn to dark emeralds.
James Wright
The ambitions are wake up, breathe, keep breathing.
Nicole Blackman
Mineral cactai,quicksilver lizards in the adobe walls,the bird that punctures space,thirst, tedium, clouds of dust, impalpable epiphanies of wind.The pines taught me to talk to myself.In that garden I learnedto send myself off.Later there were no gardens.
Octavio Paz
because two bodies, naked and entwined,leap over time, they are invulnerable,nothing can touch them, they return to the source,there is no you, no I, no tomorrow,no yesterday, no names, the truth of twoin a single body, a single soul,oh total being...
Octavio Paz
Well, now,if little by little you stop loving meI shall stop loving you little by little.If suddenlyyou forget medo not look for me,for I shall already have forgotten you.
Pable Neruda
there anybody there?' said the Traveller,Knocking on the moonlit door;And his horse in the silence champed the grassesOf the forest's ferny floor.And a bird flew up out of the turret,Above the Traveller's head:And he smote upon the door again a second time;'Is there anybody there?' he said.But no one descended to the Traveller;No head from the leaf-fringed sillLeaned over and looked into his grey eyes,Where he stood perplexed and still.But only a host of phantom listenersThat dwelt in the lone house thenStood listening in the quiet of the moonlightTo that voice from the world of men:Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,That goes down to the empty hall,Hearkening in an air stirred and shakenBy the lonely Traveller's call.And he felt in his heart their strangeness,Their stillness answering his cry,While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,'Neath the starred and leafy sky;For he suddenly smote on the door, evenLouder, and lifted his head:--'Tell them I came, and no one answered,That I kept my word,' he said.Never the least stir made the listeners,Though every word he spakeFell echoing through the shadowiness of the still houseFrom the one man left awake:Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,And the sound of iron on stone,And how the silence surged softly backward,When the plunging hoofs were gone.
Walter de la Mare
A FEATHER.A feather is trimmed, it is trimmed by the light and the bug and the post, it is trimmed by little leaning and by all sorts of mounted reserves and loud volumes. It is surely cohesive.
Gertrude Stein
I am too full of lifeto be half-loved.
Ijeoma Umebinyuo
Will you walk into my parlour?" said the Spider to the Fly
Mary Howitt
Poetry may make us from time to time a little more aware of the deeper, unnamed feelings which form the substratum of our being, to which we rarely penetrate; for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves.
T.S Eliot