Poetry Quotes - Page 86

I do believe in poetry. I believe that there are creatures endowed with the power to put things together and bring them back to life

Hélène Cixous

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

There is such a shelter in each other.

Nick Laird

I have only to contemplate myself; man comes from nothing, passes through time, and disappears forever in the bosom of God. He is seen but for a moment wandering on the verge of two abysses, and then is lost.If man were wholly ignorant of himself he would have no poetry in him, for one cannot describe what one does not conceive. If he saw himself clearly, his imagination would remain idle and would have nothing to add to the picture. But the nature of man is sufficiently revealed for him to know something of himself and sufficiently veiled to leave much impenetrable darkness, a darkness in which he ever gropes, forever in vain, trying to understand himself.

Alexis de Tocqueville

That is what you meant to me: a light that shone through the darkness.” (Your smile, p. 56)

Chimnese Davids

Remembrance and reflection how allied!What thin partitions Sense from Thought divide!

Alexander Pope

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

What is madness but nobility of the soul at odds with circumstance.

Theodore Roethke

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

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

At breakfast!' said Louise in an awed voice. 'A man who can read poetry at breakfast would be capable of anything.

Mary Stewart

Do not turn me intorestless watersif you cannot promiseto be my stream.

Sanober Khan

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

There is risk and truth to yourselves and the world before you.

Seamus Heaney

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

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

all right buddah gets a backstage pass but all his friends have to pay

Jim Carroll

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

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

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

MiaowConsider me.I sit here like Tiberius,inscrutable and grand.I will let "I dare not"wait upon "I would"and bear the twanglingof your small guitarbecause you are my owland foster me with milk.Why wet my paw?Just keep me in a bagand no one knows the truth.I am familiar with witchesand stand a better chance in hell than youfor I can dance on hot bricks,leap your heightand land on all fours.I am the servant of the Living God.I worship in my way. Look into these slit green stonesand follow your reflected lights into the dark.Michel, Duc de Montaigne, knew.You don't play with me.I play with you.

Mark Haddon

don't wait for the man standing in the snowto cut off his arm help him now

Ikkyu

What did you think, that joy / was some slight thing?

Mark Doty

Most people ignore most poetry because poetry ignores most people.

Adrian Mitchell

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

When one does something, one must do it wholly and well. Those bastard existences where you sell suet all day and write poetry at night are made for mediocre minds – like those horses that are equally good for saddle and carriage, the worst kind, that can neither jump a ditch nor pull a plow.

Gustave Flaubert

Catch from the board of beauty/ Such careless crumbs as fall.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

The Apache don't have a word for love," he said. "Know what they both say at the marriage? The squaw-taking ceremony?""Tell me.""Varlebena. It means forever. That's all they say.

Louis L'Amour

How you die out in me:down to the lastworn-out knot of breathyou're there, with a splinter of life.

Paul Celan

Publishing a book of poetry is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo.

Don Marquis

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

I am waiting for the war to be fought which will make the world safe for anarchy

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

The way through the worldIs more difficult to find than the way beyond it.

Wallace Stevens

Only poetry isn't shit.

Roberto Bolaño

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

All a poet can do today is warn.

Wilfred Owen

Poems are difficult to silence.

Stephen Greenblatt

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

These Songs are not meant to be understood, you understand.They are only meant to terrify & comfort.

John Berryman

Has it ever occurred to you,' he said, 'that the whole history of English poetry has been de-termined by the fact that the English language lacks rhymes?

George Orwell

The townspeople took the prince for deadWhen he never returned with the dragon’s headWhen with her, he stayedShe thought he’d be too afraidBut he loved her too much instead.

Jess C. Scott

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

... 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

from my chair i can see the street and it seems depressing

Brandon Scott Gorrell

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

I have been right, Basil, haven’t I, to take my love out of poetry, and to find my wife in Shakespeare’s plays? Lips that Shakespeare taught to speak have whispered their secret in my ear. I have had the arms of Rosalind around me, and kissed Juliet on the mouth.

Oscar Wilde

There's no retirement for an artist,its your way of living so theres no end to it.

Bono

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

Xs and OsLove is a gameof tic-tac-toe,constantly waiting,for the next x or o.

Lang Leav

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

To see the Summer SkyIs Poetry, though never in a Book it lie—True Poems flee—

Emily Dickinson

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

I shivered in thosesolitudeswhen I heardthe voiceofthe saltin the desert.

Pablo Neruda

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

Your politics are so far right,They're wrong.

Harry Whitewolf

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

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

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

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Poetry Quotes - Page 86

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