Poetry Quotes - Page 70

If it chance your eye offends you,Pluck it out lad, and be sound:'Twill hurt, but here are salves to friend you,And many a balsam grows on ground.And if your hand or foot offend you,Cut it off, lad, and be whole;But play the man, stand up and end you,When your sickness is your soul.
A.E. Housman
From morn to noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve, a summer's day; and with the setting sun dropped from the zenith like a falling star.
John Milton
Hesitancy is the surest destroyer of talent. One cannot be timorous and reticent, one must be original and loud. New metaphors, new rhythms, new expressions of emotion can only spring from unhindered gall. Nothing should interfere with that intuition--not the fear of appearing stupid, nor of offending somebody, nor jeopardizing publication, nor being trivial. The intuition must be as unhindered as a karate chop.
Stephen Dobyns
…Perses, hear me out on justice, and take what I have to say to heart; cease thinking of violence. For the son of Kronos, Zeus, has ordained this law to men: that fishes and wild beasts and winged birds should devour one another, since there is no justice in them; but to mankind he gave justice which proves for the best.
Hesiod
you told me onceabout how they usedto build whole city statesout of poemshow everything you see hereis made out ofthe bones of dreamshow having a stiffdrink with lorca meantyou had to writeeverything down right awaylately the words justwon’t come
John Dorsey
To whom shall I offer this book, young and sprightly,Neat, polished, wide-margined, and finished politely?To you, my Cornelius, whose learning pedantic,Has dared to set forth in three volumes giganticThe history of ages—ye gods, what a labor!—And still to enjoy the small wit of a neighbor.A man who can be light and learned at once, sir,By life's subtle logic is far from a dunce, sir.So take my small book—if it meet with your favor.The passing of years cannot dull its sweet savor.
Catullus
Nobody reads poetry anymoreSo who the hell are youI see bent over this book?
Aleksandar Ristović
I don't tolerate politics that come from anger. I want a politics derived from beauty... I don't admire politicians, but poets. (Rubem Alves, p. 189)
Mev Puleo
Suddenly, I was stopped by a quiet song . .Somebody stood, swaying slowly on the road,In the darkest shadow by a puddle,And low above it a small tree grew . .It might’ve been a wild cherry tree . .He kept singing, watching the puddle fill . .I dragged the pine through the water,And with my other hand steadied my sack,Where a bottle of red vino dangled . .He didn’t move, but kept on singing . .Should I have stopped thereAnd joined his singing? . .Had he foundThe one happy tree? . .No one knows where it grows—Or what it looks like . .And who is allowed to recognize it? . .I never stood under it,Even to wait for rain to passOr watch between the dropsThe silent froth appear . .Swaying, he kept on singing . .Otherwise, he would have fallenAnd the rain stopped . .He danced his own rainUnder that tree . .I can’t do such things . .Perhaps it was a wolf? . .
Oleh Lysheha
Take you example by this thing,/ And yield to each his right,/ Lest God with such like miserye/ Your wicked minds requite
Various
He had not been able to see it in himself, but looking at Hungerford, he was able at least to speculate on the possibility that fear, raw, physical fear, had a kind of gift to give, too. Who but the terrified has heard his own heart pounding, listened to his own stertorous breathing, wishing that heart and lungs would be more quiet, and yet learning in their pulsation the lessons of rhythm and metrics? (Anagrams, p. 80)
David R. Slavitt
We must remember that there is a great difference between a myth and a miracle. A myth is the idealization of a fact. A miracle is the counterfeit of a fact. There is the same difference between a myth and a miracle that there is between fiction and falsehood -- between poetry and perjury. Miracles belong to the far past and the far future. The little line of sand, called the present, between the seas, belongs to common sense to the natural.
Robert G. Ingersoll
I hate the day, because it lendeth lightTo see all things, but not my love to see.
Edmund Spenser
Think of your woods and orchards without birds!Of empty nests that cling to boughs and beamsAs in an idiot's brain remembered wordsHang empty 'mid the cobwebs of his dreams!
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Calligraphy may well be simply an artistic version of another form, that is the ideograms which make up the poem, but then not only does it reflect the character and temperament of the artist but . . . also betrays his heart rate, his breathing.
Dai Sijie
The same that oft-times hath charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam of perilous seas, in fairy lands forlorn.
John Keats
In The Sunset SkyThe sunset sky dazzling with the golden hues, Taking bow in brilliant sparkle of experienceIs it not a climax, of the story so far, that was today?Or is it building anticipation of the night yet to come. Watch the days go, some proud of their accomplishmentsSome leaving sighs of disappointments, Leaving all in awe of its Amaranthine twists and turns And the fortunate get to see the moon trying to steal the show from setting sun,Oh she is such a show off, isn't she, basking in reflected gloryIts magical, the sunset sky,Puzzling, sometimes just like a riddle,Leaving the nature stunned and amazed For it has been filling the canvas whole day with colours And now the sunset threatens to hide them all And in dark all the colours will be sameA cue for the wise.Sunset sky has so much to offer, is she not a fine exampleof how uncertain a life can beOften reminding no matter what you planned, there will besome unexpected returnsFor End has its own brain, its own scriptCharting its own courseSo why just the beginning,every moment of the life should be grand, meted with equal passion and fervorShe has been so clever; the sunset skyLeaving Twinkling cryptic messages for the night skyFor even the dark has sparkle and hope if you keep your head up, A constant reminder that exuberance is an attitude of deep,rich, warm heartsI want my sunset sky to be grand, magical, and full of stories of my life that has been And its memories to linger on in this world, in the tomorrow and a few more years to come
Soma Mukherjee
When I composed those verses I was preoccupied less with music than with an experience—an experience in which that beautiful musical allegory had shown its moral side, had become an awakening and a summons to a life vocation. The imperative form of the poem which specially displeases you is not the expression of a command and a will to teach but a command and warning directed towards myself. Even if you were not fully aware of this, my friend, you could have read it in the closing lines. I experienced an insight, you see, a realization and an inner vision, and wished to impress and hammer the moral of this vision into myself. That is the reason why this poem has remained in my memory. Whether the verses are good or bad they have achieved their aim, for the warning has lived on within me and has not been forgotten. It rings anew for me again to-day, and that is a wonderful little experience which your scorn cannot take away from me.
Hermann Hesse
I've never been able to write poetry without having vast tracts of dead time. Poetry requires a certain kind of disciplined indolence that the world, including many prose writers, doesn't recognize as discipline. It is, though. It's the discipline to endure hours that you refuse to fill with anything but the possibility of poetry, though you may in fact not be able to write a word of it just then, and though it may be playing practical havoc with your life. It's the discipline of preparedness.
Christian Wiman
Just EnoughSoil for legsAxe for handsFlower for eyesBird for earsMushrooms for noseSmile for mouthSongs for lungsSweat for skinWind for mind
Nanao Sakaki
I suppose that's how it looks in prose. But it's very different if you look at it through poetry…and I think it's nicer…' Anne recovered herself and her eyes shone and her cheeks flushed… 'to look at it through poetry.
L.M. Montgomery
Songs of myselfClear and sweet is my soul, and clear and sweet is all that is not my soul. Lack one lacks both, and the unseen is proved by the seen, Till that becomes unseen and receives proof in its turn.
Walt Whitman
Where even ravi (the sun) cannot reach, there will go a kavi (poet)." - Vimalananda
Robert E. Svoboda
Poems have ideas. The ideas of poems come out of their emotions and their emotions are carried on images.
E.L.Doctorow
As Henry Moore carvedor modelled his sculpture every day,he strove to surpass Donatello4. and failed, but woke the next morningelated for another try.
Donald Hall
Death makes its own choices. Has reasoning an order has a taste…
Angelo Tsanatelis
to split the very sea into ours and theirs." Border at the BeachAnd More White Sheets
Eileen Granfors
The distinctive features of the world's civilisations are not simply and solely the giraffe and the city of Rome, as the children may perhaps have been led to imagine on the first evening, but also the elephant and the country of Denmark, beside many other things. Yes, everyday brought its new animal and its new country, its new kings and its new gods, its quota of those tough little figures which seem to have no significance, but are nevertheless endowed with a life and a value of their own, and may be added together or subtracted from one another at will. And finally poetry, which is grater than any country ; poetry with its bright palaces.
Halldór Laxness
Who will read these poems when the people are gone?
Dominic Owen Mallary
I could have been 23 next July I gambled on what mattered most, the dice were cast. I lost.
Hannah Senesh
Which the Chicken and Which the Egg?He drinks because she scolds, he thinks;She thinks she scolds because he drinks;And nether will admit what's true,That he's a sot and she's a shrew.
Ogden Nash
Moon, that against the lintel of the westYour forehead lean until the gate be swung,Longing to leave the world and be at rest,Being worn with faring and no longer young,Do you recall at all the Carian hillWhere worn with loving, loving late you lay,Halting the sun because you lingered still,While wondering candles lit the Carian day?Ah, if indeed this memory to your mindRecall some sweet employment, pity me,That even now the dawn's dim herald see!I charge you, goddess, in the name of oneYou loved as well: endure, hold off the sun.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Why covet a knowledge of new facts? Day and night, house and garden, a few books, a few actions, serve us as well as would all trades and all spectacles. We are far from having exhausted the significance of the few symbols we use. We can come to use them yet with a terrible simplicity.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
My heart in the East But the rest of me far in the West— How can I savor this life, even taste what I eat? How, in the bonds of the Moor, Zion chained to the Cross, Can I do what I’ve vowed to and must? Gladly I’d leave All the best of grand Spain For one glimpse of the ruined Shrine’s dust.
Yehuda HaLevi
Recuerdo que algún día yo le hablé de mi río y una como tormenta se agitó en sus estrañas. No sé si fue mi pecho que tembló de recuerdo o si fueron mis ojos que asomaron nostalgias." "I remember a day when I spoke of my river and something like a storm stirred in his being. Was it my breast that trembled with the memory Was it nostalgia that showed through my eyes
Julia de Burgos
But he never forgot how once by not knowing time,He escaped into the clockless land of ever,Where time hides tick-less waiting to be born.
U.A. Fanthorpe
Terror is an artery. Running unfailing channels of bloodied thoroughfares by dint of the wilds beyond our knowing. Fluctuations and murmurs are audible within the splintered leeway of our preserve as a consequence of interstices modeled in such brutality. This appended artery offers no direction; idle and at times desultory. Bloodstained tracks and avenues guide casualties. Terror, like death, is not complicated, nor is it simple. It is but routine—natural. To call it otherwise is to parsimoniously say that birth is effortless, hurricanes are facile, and earthquakes are meek when they are a lot more.Myths, parables, and allegories lie in the construct of terror. Kings have fallen and succeeded in the yarns of terror. Simple men have been turned into heroes due to terror. Villains have been great orchestrators in the art of terror, allowing sole individuals and denizens to feel their makings. A soul never needed God to feel terror. The most nihilistic can undergo such a dreadful emotion. Animals are perfect examples of this. They are well-equipped creations to the world of terror and death, holding no cognizance to deity or creator.Terror is quite exclusive as it is a function of the mind, conducted by the intersections and throughways of nerves and bounded to that alone. Although it approaches with university, like hunger or sickness, it is selfish by fashion and segregating in nature. But death is quite opposite… death is all embracing. Disregarded and glossed over, it is never reserved or inaudible, especially if you listen hard enough.Death transmits a signal that can be discerned if you listen hard enough. Frail in birthing, the airing is not limited to the clairvoyant, though they are a standard audience. The most simple-minded can hear this. But they choose to ignore it for whatever grounds. Even in the obviousness of it when it comes in dream, awaking its public in night terrors and cold sweats, it should be heeded.In lurk of dark uncertainties the signal should be adhered in this societal horrific caprice.Death is a declaration waiting to broadcast the haunting awareness of our own deterrence.And within these pages is its proclamation.
J.C. Whitfield
You and those shot-glass eyes, deep swirling pools of 80-proof firewater, with the depth and profundity of Saturn’s spinning pulsars…
Brandi L. Bates
ink marks the page/where you execute your will like a doe announcing an/ox-stern mate with a single, bleary blink.
Melissa Lee-Houghton
He calls me desperate (on my tombstone)I hope poetic license will allow: HUNGRY
Eli Coppola
[H]e initially conceived of Olivier as a man of the greatest promise destroyed by a fatal flaw, the unreasoning passion for a woman dissolving into violence, desperately weakening everything he tried to do. For how could learning and poetry be defended when it produced such dreadful results and was advanced by such imperfect creatures? At least Julien did not see the desperate fate of the ruined lover as a nineteenth-century novelist or a poet might have done, recasting the tale to create some appealing romantic hero, dashed to pieces against the unyielding society that produced him. Rather, his initial opinion -- held almost to the last -- was of Olivier as a failure, ruined by a terible weakness.
Iain Pears
Behold yon rough and flinty roadWhere youth, now youth no more,Gropes whining, seeking crumbs of loavesHe cast away of yore.
Emma Ghent Curtis
The future belongs to all who, refusing to look back at the past move ahead with the clock as it ticks.
Odo Simon Agbo
When I examine my mind and try to discern clearly in the matter, I cannot satisfy myself that there are any such things as poetical ideas. No truth, it seems to me, is too precious, no observation too profound, and no sentiment too exalted to be expressed in prose. The utmost I could admit is that some ideas do, while others do not, lend themselves kindly to poetical expression; and that those receive from poetry an enhancement which glorifies and almost transfigures them, and which is not perceived to be a separate thing except by analysis.
A.E. Housman
An educator will teach the students. An Educarer will reach the students.
Tanya R. Liverman
If there has been one overriding change in poetic practice, it is that under the influence of free verse the poets have made a primary virtue out of exactitude and economy of meaning: this has replaced metrical skill as the first thing the poet tunes to.
Martin Langford
Receio que a poesia é pior que o sexo tântrico: não mexe nem sai de cima.I'm afraid that poetry is worse than tantric sex: it does not not move or get off.
Victor Eustáquio
Le vin est la gaieté, dit-on ; comment cet océan de vin qui submerge la commune de Bercy n’égaye-t-il pas un peu ces navrants paysages ? Tout Bacchus est là ; Bacchus, chanté avec tant de constance par nos poètes ébriolants. Bacchus ne peut-il rasséréner ces horizons en deuil ? ou faut-il croire que Bacchus lui-même, ennemi de l’eau, est incommodé par le voisinage de la rivière ?
Paul Féval père
Приспособяваме се тихо към живота,доволни и от бледите утехи,които вятърът довяваи пуска в празните ни джобове.Но още храним обич към светащом спираме пред гладно котенце на прага,готови да го приютим в протрития ръкав,да го спасим от улицата - шумна и жестока.(...)Играта е такава - кара ни да се усмихваме насила.И все пак виждаме луната, спряла над самотна уличка,да преобръща празна кофа в искряща чаша на смеха,и все пак чуваме през веселия шум и нашите стремежигласа на котенце, което вика сред пустинята.
Hart Crane
crawled like a blind slug into the web
Charles Bukowski
It was useless trying to explain to Cecila that poetry wasn't a commodity, that it could never be bought or sold, that it was, in fact, unteansferrable, remaining forever a part of the one who wrote it.
Tennessee Williams
Poetry, if it is not to be a lifeless repetition of forms, must be constantly exploring "the frontiers of the spirit." But these frontiers are not like the surveys of geographical explorers, conquered once for all and settled. The frontiers of the spirit are more like the jungle which, unless continuously kept under control, is always ready to encroach and eventually obliterate the cultivated area.
T.S Eliot
For the past thirty years or so, much American poetry has been marked by an earnestness that rejects the comic. This has nothing to do with seriousness. The comic can be very serious. The trouble with the earnest is that it seeks to be commended. It seeks to be praised for its intention more than for what it is saying.
Stephen Dobyns
Forge your iron; shape it by force, not into a flower you already know but into what can also be a flower if you think it is and it is so.
João Cabral de Melo Neto
An artist is identical with an anarchist,' he cried. 'You might transpose the words anywhere. An anarchist is an artist. The man who throws a bomb is an artist, because he prefers a great moment to everything. He sees how much more valuable is one burst of blazing light, one peal of perfect thunder, than the mere common bodies of a few shapeless policemen. An artist disregards all governments, abolishes all conventions. The poet delights in disorder only. If it were not so, the most poetical thing in the world would be the Underground Railway.''So it is,' said Mr. Syme.'Nonsense!' said Gregory, who was very rational when any one else attempted paradox.
G.K. Chesterton
Though the body is itsgenesis, a poem is the vision of a processCarved in space, vision your poor eye's singlearmor against winter spring summer fall
Frank Bidart
Poetry is the whispering of a truth by the shouting of the best possible lies
Oscar Sparrow
It [Bach's cello suites] is like a great diamond," said [Mischa] Maisky in a thick Russian accent, "with so many different cuts that reflect light in so many different ways.
Eric Siblin
The first inkling of this notion had come to him the Christmas before, at his daughter's place in Vermont. On Christmas Eve, as indifferent evening took hold in the blue squares of the windows, he sat alone in the crepuscular kitchen, imbued with a profound sense of the identity of winter and twilight, of twilight and time, of time and memory, of his childhood and that church which on this night waited to celebrate the second greatest of its feasts. For a moment or an hour as he sat, become one with the blue of the snow and the silence, a congruity of star, cradle, winter, sacrament, self, it was as though he listened to a voice that had long been trying to catch his attention, to tell him, Yes, this was the subject long withheld from him, which he now knew, and must eventually act on.He had managed, though, to avoid it. He only brought it out now to please his editor, at the same time aware that it wasn't what she had in mind at all. But he couldn't do better; he had really only the one subject, if subject was the word for it, this idea of a notion or a holy thing growing clear in the stream of time, being made manifest in unexpected ways to an assortment of people: the revelation itself wasn't important, it could be anything, almost. Beyond that he had only one interest, the seasons, which he could describe endlessly and with all the passion of a country-bred boy grown old in the city. He was beginning to doubt (he said) whether these were sufficient to make any more novels out of, though he knew that writers of genius had made great ones out of less. He supposed really (he didn't say) that he wasn't a novelist at all, but a failed poet, like a failed priest, one who had perceived that in fact he had no vocation, had renounced his vows, and yet had found nothing at all else in the world worth doing when measured by the calling he didn't have, and went on through life fatally attracted to whatever of the sacerdotal he could find or invent in whatever occupation he fell into, plumbing or psychiatry or tending bar. ("Novelty")
John Crowley
...red sings like summer in the shadows, hot on my tongue...
Nell Grey

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