Poetry Quotes - Page 94

Verde que te quiero verde. Verde viento. Verdes ramas. El barco sobre la mar y el caballo en la montaña.

I wanted the past to go away, I wantedto leave it, like another country; I wantedmy life to close, and openlike a hinge, like a wing, like the part of the songwhere it fallsdown over the rocks: an explosion, a discovery;I wantedto hurry into the work of my life; I wanted to know,whoever I was, I wasalivefor a little while.

Mary Oliver

Real haiku is the soul of poetry. Anything that is not actually present in one's heart is not haiku. The moon glows, flowers bloom, insects cry, water flows. There is no place we cannot find flowers or think of the moon. This is the essence of haiku. Go beyond the restrictions of your era, forget about purpose or meaning, separate yourself from historical limitations—there you will find the essence of true art, religion, and science.

Santōka Taneda

A precious, mouldering pleasure ’t is To meet an antique book, In just the dress his century wore; A privilege, I think.

Emily Dickinson

Marriage I thinkFor womenIs the best of opiates.It kills the thoughtsThat think about the thoughts,It is the best of opiates.So said Maria.But too long in solitude she'd dwelt,And too long her thoughts had feltTheir strength. So when the man drew near,Out popped her thoughts and covered him with fear.Poor Maria! Better that she had kept her thoughts on a chain,For now she's alone again and all in pain;She sighs for the man that went and the thoughts that stayTo trouble her dreams by night and her dreams by day.

Stevie Smith

The true poem rests between the words.

Vanna Bonta

Art is long, and Time is fleeting.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

This weekin live currentevents: your eyes.All power can bedangerous:Director alternating,you, socket to me.Plugged in and the gridis humming,this electricity,molecule-deep desire:particular friction, a chargestrong enough to stopa heartor start itagain; volt, re-volt--I shudder, I stutter, I startto life. I've got my ionyou, copper-top,so watch how youconduct yourself.Here's today'snewsflash: a battery of rollingblackouts in California, sudden,like lightning kisses:sudden, whitehotdarkness and you'rehere, fumbling forthat small switchwith an urgent surgestrong enough to killlesser machines.Static makes hair raise,makes things cling,makes things rise likea gathering stormcharging outsideour darkened houseand here I am:tempest, pouring outmouthfullsof tsunami on the ground,I've got that rain-soaked kite,that drenched key.You know what it's for,circuit-breaker, you knowhow to kiss until it's hertz.

Daphne Gottlieb

How does the ordinary person come to the transcendent? For a start, I would say, study poetry. Learn how to read a poem. You need not have the experience to get the message, or at least some indication of the message. It may come gradually. (92)

Joseph Campbell

How to Write a PoemCatch the airaround the butterfly.

Katerina Stoykova-Klemer

One fine day, in the middle of the night, two dead boys got up to fight. Back to back they faced each other. They pulled out their swords and shot one another. One deaf cop, on the beat heard the noise, and came and shot the two dead boys.

Holly Black

The rain set early in tonight,The sullen wind was soon awake,It tore the elm-tops down for spite,And did its best to vex the lake:I listened with heart fit to break.When glided in Porphyria; straightShe shut the cold out and the storm,And kneeled and made the cheerless grateBlaze up and all the cottage warm;

Robert Browning

Will grinned. “Some of these books are dangerous,” he said. “It’s wise to be careful.”“One must always be careful of books,” said Tessa, “and what is inside them, for words have the power to change us.”“I’m not sure a book has ever changed me,” said Will. “Well, there is one volume that promises to teach one how to turn oneself into an entire flock of sheep—”“Only the very weak-minded refuse to be influenced by literature and poetry,” said Tessa

Cassandra Clare

My soul is wrapped in harsh repose,Midnight descends in raven-colored clothes,But soft... behold!A sunlight beamButting a swath of glimmering gleam.My heart expands,'tis grown a bulge in it,Inspired by your beauty...Effulgent.

Joss Whedon

I sat, a solitary man,In a crowded London shop,An open book and empty cupOn the marble table-top.While on the shop and street I gazedMy body of a sudden blazed;And twenty minutes more or lessIt seemed, so great my happiness,That I was blessed and could bless.

W.B. Yeats

Flutter like a hummingbird, Dive like an eagle, Ain't no bird that's my equal. - Twilight

Kathryn Lasky

My words are the garment of what I shall never be Like the tucked sleeve of a one-armed boy.

W.S. Merwin

One difference between poetry and lyrics is that lyrics sort of fade into the background. They fade on the page and live on the stage when set to music.

Stephen Sondheim

After great pain, a formal feeling comes – The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs – The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,And Yesterday, or Centuries before?The Feet, mechanical, go round – Of Ground, or Air, or Ought – A Wooden way Regardless grown, A Quartz contentment, like a stone – 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

O words are poor receipts for what time hath stole away

John Clare

The secret of poetry is never explained - is always new. We have not got farther than mere wonder at the delicacy of the touch, & the eternity it inherits. In every house a child that in mere play utters oracles, & knows not that they are such. 'Tis as easy as breath. 'Tis like this gravity, which holds the Universe together, & none knows what it is.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Who you are contributes to your poetry in a number of important ways, but you shouldn't identify with your poems so closely that when they are cut, you're the one that bleeds.

Dorianne Laux

Little CinderGirl, they can't understand you.You rise from the as-heap in a blazeand only then do they recognize you as their one true love.While you pray beneath your mother's tree you carrve a phoenix into your palmwth aa hazel twig and coal;every night she devours more of you.You used to believe in angels.Now you believe in the makeover;if you can't get the grime off your faceand your foot into a size six heelwho will ever bother to notice you?The kettle and the broom sear in your grasp,snap into fragments. The turtledoves sing,"There's blood within the shoe."You deserve the palace, you think, as you signalthe pigeons to attack, approve the barrel filled with red-hot nails.Its great hearth beckons, and the prince's flagrises crimson in the angry sun.He will love you for the heat you generate,for the flames you ignite around you,though he encase your tiny feet in glassto keep them from scorching the ground.

Jeannine Hall Gailey

This cruel age has deflected me,like a river from this course.Strayed from its familiar shores,my changeling life has flowedinto a sister channel.How many spectacles I've missed:the curtain rising without me,and falling too. How many friendsI never had the chance to meet.

Anna Akhmatova

This fire that we call Loving is too strong for human minds. But just right for human souls.

Aberjhani

Sometimes I think,I need a spare heart to feel all the things I feel.

Sanober Khan

A Robin Redbreast in a CagePuts all Heaven in a Rage.A dove house fill’d with doves and pigeonsShudders Hell thro’ all its regions.A Dog starv’d at his Master’s GatePredicts the ruin of the State.A Horse misus’d upon the RoadCalls to Heaven for Human blood.Each outcry of the hunted HareA fiber from the Brain does tear.

William Blake

Like poetry, fashion does not state anything. It merely suggests

Karl Lagerfeld

Thus, though we cannot make our sun Stand still, yet we will make him run.

Andrew Marvell

Doubt not, O poet, but persist. Say 'It is in me, and shall out.' Stand there, balked and dumb, stuttering and stammering, hissed and hooted, stand and strive, until at last rage draw out of thee that dream-power which every night shows thee is thine own; a power transcending all limit and privacy, and by virtue of which a man is the conductor of the whole river of electricity.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

First, I thought, almost despairing,This must crush my spirit now;Yet I bore it, and am bearing-Only do not ask me how.

Heinrich Heine

so much dependsupona red wheelbarrowglazed with rainwaterbeside the whitechickens.

William Carlos Williams

Sweetest smile is made saddest tear-drop!

Edwin Arnold

Your war drum ain't / louder than this breath.

Suheir Hammad

I wander through each chartered street,Near where the chartered Thames does flow;A mark in every face I meet,Marks of weakness, marks of woe.In every cry of every man,In every infant’s cry of fear,In every voice, in every ban,The mind-forged manacles I hear:How the chimney-sweeper’s cryEvery blackening church appals,And the hapless soldier’s sighRuns in blood down palace-walls.But most, through midnight streets I hearHow the youthful harlot’s curseBlasts the new-born infant’s tear,And blights with plagues the marriage-hearse.

William Blake

Reminiscing in the drizzle of Portland, I notice the ring that’s landed on your finger, a massiveinsect of glitter, a chandelier shining at the endof a long tunnel. Thirteen years ago, you hid the hurtin your voice under a blanket and said there’s two kindsof women—those you write poems aboutand those you don’t. It’s true. I never brought youa bouquet of sonnets, or served you haiku in bed.My idea of courtship was tapping Jane’s Addictionlyrics in Morse code on your window at three A.M., whiskey doing push-ups on my breath. But I workedwithin the confines of my character, castas the bad boy in your life, the Magellanof your dark side. We don’t have a past so muchas a bunch of electricity and liquor, powernever put to good use. What we had togethermakes it sound like a virus, as if we caughtone another like colds, and desire was merelya symptom that could be treated with soupand lots of sex. Gliding beside you now, I feel like the Benjamin Franklin of monogamy, as if I invented it, but I’m still not immuneto your waterfall scent, still haven’t developedantibodies for your smile. I don’t know how longregret existed before humans stuck a word on it.I don’t know how many paper towels it would taketo wipe up the Pacific Ocean, or why the lightof a candle being blown out travels fasterthan the luminescence of one that’s just been lit, but I do know that all our huffing and puffinginto each other’s ears—as if the brain was a trickbirthday candle—didn’t make the silenceany easier to navigate. I’m sorry all the kissesI scrawled on your neck were writtenin disappearing ink. Sometimes I thought of youso hard one of your legs would pop outof my ear hole, and when I was sleeping, you’d pressyour face against the porthole of my submarine.I’m sorry this poem has taken thirteen yearsto reach you. I wish that just once, instead of skiddingoff the shoulder blade’s precipice and joyridingover flesh, we’d put our hands away like chocolateto be saved for later, and deciphered the calligraphyof each other’s eyelashes, translated a paragraphfrom the volumes of what couldn’t be said.

Jeffrey McDaniel

The first rose on my rose-tree Budded, bloomed, and shattered, During sad days when to me Nothing mattered. Grief of grief has drained me clean; Still it seems a pity No one saw,—it must have been Very pretty.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

It's important to have your private enjoyments because sometimes that's all we have.

Kay Ryan

I am suggesting that the radical of poetry lies not in theresolution of doubts but in their proliferation

C.D. Wright

What Youth deemed crystal, Age finds out was dew

Robert Browning

Cut my life into pizzas. this is my plastic fork. oven baking, no breathing, dont give a fuck if its carbs that i'm eating' -Catherine Spann

Catherine Spann

I stalk certain words... I catch them in mid-flight, as they buzz past, I trap them, clean them, peel them, I set myself in front of the dish, they have a crystalline texture to me, vibrant, ivory, vegetable, oily, like fruit, like algae, like agates, like olives... I stir them, I shake them, I drink them, I gulp them down, I mash them, I garnish them... I leave them in my poem like stalactites, like slivers of polished wood, like coals, like pickings from a shipwreck, gifts from the waves... Everything exists in the word.

Pablo Neruda

i want to be in love with youthe same wayi am in love with the moonwith the lightshiningout of its soul.

Sanober Khan

Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.

Plato

Staring GirlI once knew a girlwho would just stand there and stare.At anyone or anything,she seemed not to careShe'd stare at the ground,She'd stare at the sky.She'd stare at you for hours,and you'd never know why.But after winning the local staring contest,she finally gave her eyesa well-deserved rest.

Tim Burton

sometimes i don't know, which momentwhich cool gust of wind will come,and enchant metousling my hairand my heart, stirring...that familiar ache of poetry, which drop will kissthe old wrench in my soulreminding me, all over againi miss you better in the rain.

Sanober Khan

What wretched poverty of language! To compare stars to diamonds!

Gustave Flaubert

I regret to say I'munable to reply to your unexpressed desires.

Harryette Mullen

সারাটি রাত্রি তারাটির সাথে তারাটিরই হয় কথা,আমাদের মুখ সারাটি রাত্রি মাটির বুকের 'পরে!

Jibanananda Das

a bruise, bluein the muscle, youimpinge upon me.As bone hugs the ache home, soI'm vexed to love you, your bodythe shape of returns, your hair a torsoof light, your heatI must have, your openingI'd eat, each momentof that soft-finned fruit,inverted fountain in which I don't see me.

Li-Young Lee

Isn’t it time that these most ancient sorrows of ours grew fruitful? Time that we tenderly loosed ourselves from the loved one, and, unsteadily, survived: the way the arrow, suddenly all vector, survives the string to be more than itself. For abiding is nowhere.

Rainer Maria Rilke

ConnubialBecause with alarming accuracy she’d been identifying patterns I was unaware of—this tic, that tendency, like the way I've mastered the language of intimacy in order to conceal how I felt— I knew I was in danger of being terribly understood.

Stephen Dunn

Edgar Allan Poe

Every word was once a poem.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

But far more numerous was the herd of such,Who think too little, and who talk too much.

John Dryden

while the scientist sees everything that happens in one point of space, the poet feels everything that happens in one point of time.

Vladimir Nabokov

When you cried, I learned what helplessness tastes like. Because all I could do was swallow.

Penny Reid

A lover goes toward his beloved as enthusiastically as a schoolboy leaving his books, but when he leaves his girlfriend, he feels as miserable as the schoolboy on his way to school. (Act 2, scene 2)

William Shakespeare

I am a work in progress.

Violet Yates

All shadows of clouds the sun cannot hide like the moon cannot stop oceanic tide;but a hidden star can still be smiling at night's black spell on darkness, beguiling

Munia Khan

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Poetry Quotes - Page 94

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