Poetry Quotes - Page 72

The house burned in the fire. Her house. Her prison of lies and of denial. Her American dream turned nightmare.”~Unbreakable Heart

Kimberly Kinrade

I am always trying to 'preserve' things by getting other people to read what I have written, and feel what I felt.

Philip Larkin

Fiction and poetry are doses, medicines. What they heal is the rupture reality makes on the imagination.

Jeanette Winterson

I will never take what is never given, but I will receive to what is given.

Michael Jones

Fragmentary BlueWhy make so much of fragmentary blueIn here and there a bird, or butterfly,Or flower, or wearing-stone, or open eye,When heaven presents in sheets the solid hue?Since earth is earth, perhaps, not heaven (as yet)--Though some savants make earth include the sky;And blue so far above us comes so high,It only gives our wish for blue a whet.

Robert Frost

Empty-page staring again tonight. It's maddening. I suppose people who don't write (like the Connollies) imagine anything that can be though can be expressed. Well, I don't know. I can't do it. It's this sort of thing that makes me belittle the whole business: what's the good of a 'talent' if you can't do it when you want to? What should we think of a woodcarver who couldn't woodcarver? or a pianist who couldn't play the piano? Bah, likewise grrr.

Philip Larkin

But the detail of the poem shows power akin to genius, and reveals to us that much neglected law of literary history -- that potential genius can never become actual unless it finds or makes the Form which it requires.

C.S. Lewis

No sword Of wrath her right arm whirl'd,But one poor poet's scroll, and with his word She shook the world.

Alfred Tennyson

The faster you go, the idler you get.

Ferreira Gullar

I,” I’ll type. And that will be enough.Then there are the other days, when nothing is enough. The poem grins. It grins because it knows it is a terrible poem. It grins in embarrassment. It grins in pity. It grins in superiority. I may be a terrible poem, it grins, but at least I have one comfort. At least I’m not a terrible poet. At least I’m not the guy who sat in front of a typewriter for two hours coming up with the likes of me.

Lynn Coady

[Poetry] was a form of incantation, a means of welding the world inside his head to the one that surrounded him, words the fiery chain that bound it all together.

Elizabeth Hand

I want a marriage of companions—one of shared lives and shared poems,' he murmured. 'If we were husband and wife, we would collect books, read, and drink tea together. As I told you before, I'd want you for what's in here.'Again he pointed to my heart, but I felt it in a place far lower in my body.

Lisa See

...prose unfolds in time; and time contains both obstacles and revelations. Prose develops, the way characters and situations do. It requires a flow. A poem is an instant, lightning across the sky. Prose is before the storm, the storm, after the storm.

Molly Peacock

Listen. Outside this frame I can see light,heavy as pardon, reliable as granite.Help me. Help me drag it into the picture.

Jeanne Murray Walker

maybe silent hurting is the new Mid-Western love

Daniel Bailey

The world is as it used to be:“All nations striving strong to makeRed war yet redder. Mad as hattersThey do no more for Christés sakeThan you who are helpless in such matters.“That this is not the judgment-hourFor some of them’s a blessed thing,For if it were they’d have to scourHell’s floor for so much threatening....“Ha, ha. It will be warmer whenI blow the trumpet (if indeedI ever do; for you are men,And rest eternal sorely need).

Thomas Hardy

I believe that open-heart surgery is a mustfor all human beings

Daniel Bailey

Poets find their voices when they articulate the wishes of the dead, especially those slain as sacrificial talismans to a larger frame of existence.

Michael S. Harper

And the testicles of the fathers hang down like old lace

Robert Penn Warren

once I trained for the Olympics but panic is not a sport

Daniel Bailey

if what is true brings us sorrow, / if what sorrow brings is truth

Robert Peake

Poetry will die when love and pain cease to exist.

Kellie Elmore

We are all poets, really.

Walter Lowenfels

something genuine like a mark in a toilet, graced with guts and gutted with grace

E.E. Cummings

Spring, spring! Bytuene Mershe ant Averil, when spray biginneth to spring! When shaws be sheene and swards full fayre, and leaves both large and longe! When the hounds of spring are on winter’s traces, in the spring time, the only pretty ring time, when the birds do sing, hey-ding-a-ding ding, cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-wee, ta-witta-woo! And so on and so on and so on. See almost any poet between the Bronze Age and 1805.

George Orwell

Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you fore defeated Challengers of oblivion Eat cynical earnings, knowing rock splits, records fall down, The square-limbed Roman letters Scale in the thaws, wear in the rain. The poet as well Builds his monument mockingly; For man will be blotted out, the blithe earth die, the brave sun Die blind and blacken to the heart: Yet stones have stood for a thousand years, and pained thoughts found The honey of peace in old poems.

Robinson Jeffers

My earliest poems appear almost skeletal to me now - it seems I've learned to add meat, muscle and a nice suit of clothes.

Wanda Lea Brayton

I don't understand the whole thrilling verse, but I love the way poetry turns ordinary words into winged things that rise up and soar!

Margarita Engle

During our first date,I wanted to hold your hand so badI almost cut mine offand threw it at youto see if you would catch it

Colin Gilbert

I fain would follow love, if that could be; I needs must follow death, who calls for me; Call and I follow, I follow! let me die.

Alfred Tennyson

The still watersWrap my lips,Eyes, nose and ears,A clearCellophane I cannot crack.

Sylvia Plath

He said he'd hurt himself against a wall or had fallen down.But there was probably some other reason for the wounded, the bandaged shoulder.With a rather abrupt gesture, reaching for a shelf to bring down some photographs he wanted to look at, the bandage came came undone and a little blood ran.I did it up again, taking my time over the binding; he wasn't in pain and I liked looking at the blood. It was a thing of my love, that blood.When he left, I found, in front of his chair, a bloody rag, part of the dressing, a rag to be thrown straight into the garbage; and I put it to my lips and kept it there a long while- the blood of love against my lips.

Constantinos P. Cavafis

Next o'er his books his eyes began to roll,In pleasing memory of all he stole.

Alexander Pope

He sits, strong and blunt as a Celtic cross, Clearly used to silence and an armchair: Tonight the wife and children will be quiet At slammed door and smoker's cough in the hall.

Seamus Heaney

In the prison of his daysTeach the free man how to praise

W.H. Auden

Hesitate once, hesitate twice, hesitate a hundred times before employing political standards as a device for the analysis and appreciation of poetry.

Christopher Hitchens

In those days I used to talk to myself as if reciting poetry.

Haruki Murakami

You alone in Europe are not ancient oh ChristianityThe most modern European is you Pope Pius XAnd you whom the windows observe shame keeps youFrom entering a church and confessing this morningYou read the prospectuses the catalogues the billboards that sing aloudThat's the poetry this morning and for the prose there are the newspapersThere are the 25 centime serials full of murder mysteriesPortraits of great men and a thousand different headlines("Zone")

Guillaume Apollinaire

I dragged myself to my feet, and with my hellhound in tow started off once more through the fastness of the wood, feeling, as the poet did before me, that my companion would be with me through the nights and through the days and down the arches of the years, and I should never be rid of him.

Daphne du Maurier

...fine love poetry tends to be written when the object of one's affection is at a safe distance; also, it often reflects a love of words more than a love of women...

Kate Fox

Please lift your snowy skies off my soul -Your diamond dreams slice through my veins

Else Lasker-Schüler

The glamorous splender of a mystical moon.. Natures sleepless wonders.

Shamima Mulla

Shadow is ever besieged, for that is its nature. Whilst darkness devours, and light steals. And so one sees shadow ever retreat to hidden places, only to return in the wake of the war between dark and light.

Steven Erikson

This is life...by all means necessary

Natasha Head

As often as we made love I remembered what my poet told me, that this man was born of a goddess, the force that moves the stars and the waves of the sea and couples the animals in the fields in spring, the power of passion, the light of the evening star.

Ursula K Le Guin

Nature is bent on new beginningand death has not a chance of winning...

Rosy Cole

Here the phenomenologist has nothing in common with the literary critic who, as has frequently been noted, judges a work that he could not create and, if we are to believe certain facile condemnations, would not want to create. A literary critic is a reader who is necessarily severe. By turning inside out like a glove an overworked complex that has become debased to the point of being part of the vocabulary of statesmen, we might say that the literary critic and the professor of rhetoric, who know-all and judge-all, readily go in for a simplex of superiority. As for me, being an addict of felicitous reading, I only read and re-read what I like, with a bit of reader's pride mixed in with much enthusiasm.

Gaston Bachelard

Aeneas' mother is a star?""No; a goddess."I said cautiously, "Venus is the power that we invoke in spring, in the garden, when things begin growing. And we call the evening star Venus."He thought it over. Perhaps having grown up in the country, among pagans like me, helped him understand my bewilderment. "So do we, he said. "But Venus also became more...With the help of the Greeks. They call her Aphrodite...There was a great poet who praised her in Latin. Delight of men and gods, he called her, dear nurturer. Under the sliding star signs she fills the ship-laden sea and the fruitful earth with her being; through her the generations are conceived and rise up to see the sun; from her the storm clouds flee; to her the earth, the skillful maker, offers flowers. The wide levels of the sea smile at her, and all the quiet sky shines and streams with light..."It was the Venus I had prayed to, it was my prayer, though I had no such words. They filled my eyes with tears and my heart with inexpressible joy.

Ursula K Le Guin

A life without books is a thirsty life, and one without poetry is...like a life without pictures.

Stephen King

I'm everyone everywhere with you without you unbound set free in limbo lost at sea.

Bryan Lee O'Malley

My sincere thanks to friends and family, especially my mother, father, brother, and Mandy, who continue to love and support me despite my obsessions.

Jonathan Ball

How are you supposed to know what to read next? This is the question that keeps us up at night, so at Day One our mission is to feed an audience of literature-hungry, time-constrained readers like you with a weekly lineup of talented authors, poets, and artists that we believe you will love. And if we can identify some of the next generation of literary stars, and cultivate an appreciation for transformative poetry and fiction, then frankly we will sleep better at night.

Carmen Johnson

Adrijene, nemoj da se duriš!Vrati se!U redu grešila samduge godine nisam se vracala kuci,ali sam ti uvek krilada je to zato što sam bila u zatvoru!Grešila sam priznajemcesto sam tukla psa,ali sam te volela!Adrijene, nemoj da se duriš!Vrati se!

Jacques Prévert

Les rêves sont seuls les réalités de la vie.

Xavier Forneret

Mind's acres are forever green: Oh, IShall keep perpetual summer here; I shallRefuse to let one startled swallow die,Or, from the copper beeches, one leaf fall.

Stanley Kunitz

It is our fate to give ourselves most lavishlyto those who'd rather not be burdened with the gift

Rodney Hall

Ik weet nietof er woorden bestaandie de geur van je huidkunnen vangen, het beweeglijkelicht in je ogen, de warmtedie in me opspringt zodraje me aanraakt, het rullegevoel van je haaraan mijn vingertoppen,de bloemblaadjestere huidvan je oogleden tegenmijn lippen.Als daar woorden voor waren,kon ik alles snelvastleggen op papiervoor als je er niet bent(en dat is dikwijls).

Hanny Michaelis

1.I told you that I was a roadway of potholes, not safe to cross. You said nothing, showed up in my driveway wearing roller-skates.2.The first time I asked you on a date, after you hung up, I held the air between our phones against my ear and whispered, “You will fall in love with me. Then, just months later, you will fall out. I will pretend the entire time that I don’t know it’s coming.”3.Once, I got naked and danced around your bedroom, awkward and safe. You did the same. We held each other without hesitation and flailed lovely. This was vulnerability foreplay.4.The last eight times I told you I loved you, they sounded like apologies.5.You recorded me a CD of you repeating, “You are beautiful.” I listened to it until I no longer thought in my own voice.6.Into the half-empty phone line, I whispered, “We will wake up believing the worst in each other. We will spit shrapnel at each other’s hearts. The bruises will lodge somewhere we don’t know how to look for and I will still pretend I don’t know its coming.”7.You photographed my eyebrow shapes and turned them into flashcards: mood on one side, correct response on the other. You studied them until you knew when to stay silent.8.I bought you an entire bakery so that we could eat nothing but breakfast for a week. Breakfast, untainted by the day ahead, was when we still smiled at each other as if we meant it.9.I whispered, “I will latch on like a deadbolt to a door and tell you it is only because I want to protect you. Really, I’m afraid that without you I mean nothing.”10.I gave you a bouquet of plane tickets so I could practice the feeling of watching you leave.11.I picked you up from the airport limping. In your absence, I’d forgotten how to walk. When I collapsed at your feet, you refused to look at me until I learned to stand up without your help.12.Too scared to move, I stared while you set fire to your apartment – its walls decaying beyond repair, roaches invading the corpse of your bedroom. You tossed all the faulty appliances through the smoke out your window, screaming that you couldn’t handle choking on one more thing that wouldn’t just fix himself.13.I whispered, “We will each weed through the last year and try to spot the moment we began breaking. We will repel sprint away from each other. Your voice will take months to drain out from my ears. You will throw away your notebook of tally marks from each time you wondered if I was worth the work. The invisible bruises will finally surface and I will still pretend that I didn’t know it was coming.”14.The entire time, I was only pretending that I knew it was coming.

Miles Walser

Ah! The anguish, the vile rage, the despairOf not being able to expressWith a shout, an extreme and bitter shout,The bleeding of my heart.

Fernando Pessoa

What is this life so full of care,We don't have time to stand and stare.

W.H. Davies

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Poetry Quotes - Page 72

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