Poetry Quotes - Page 86

In a myriad of ways you tell one truth.

Prowling the meanings of a word, prowling the history of a person, no use expecting a flood of light. Human words have no main switch. But all those little kidnaps in the dark. And then the luminous, big, shivering, discandied, unrepentant, barking web of them that hangs in your mind when you turn back to the page you were trying to translate...

There is a Moment in each Day that Satan cannot find

Death is not considerate, or fair.

Books on the bookshelvesAnd stacked on the floorBooks kept in basketsAnd propped by the doorBooks in neat pilesAnd in disarrayBooks tucked in closetsAnd books on displayBooks filling cranniesAnd books packed in nooksBooks massed in windowsAnd mounded in crooksLibraries beckonAnd bookstores inviteBut book-filled rooms welcomeUs back home at night!

The sea is a desert of waves,A wilderness of water.

If you wake up tired, you’ve been chasing dreams. If you go to bed tired, your making your dreams happen.

I felt a Cleaving in my Mind—As if my Brain had split—I tried to match it—Seam by Seam—But could not make it fit.

It could be yesterdaywhen I was less in loveI thinkFor I didn’t see you in the mirrorbehind mewhile getting dressed.The way your hands couldn’t stay awayand our bodies always found their ways back to each otheras if they were meant to be togetherClose.But then it was today and I saw you againin the mirrorbehind me while getting dressedSo I go to sleep tonightalonewithout actually falling asleep because I’m scared of the moment I will wake upand realise it was just a dreamYou’re actually gone.Now all I can do is get through to another tomorrowhoping that I will be less in loveagainLike yesterdayBut not today.I was never really well with things at all.

The kind of poetry to avoid in the pretty-pretty kind that pleased our grandmothers, the kind that Longfellow and Tennyson, good poets at their best, wrote at their worst.

After Homer and Dante, is a whole century of creating worth one Shakespeare?

To see a World in a grain of sand,And a Heaven in a wild flower,Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,And Eternity in an hour.

My art unkind, my energy all gone blind;The limbs uneven, the face shallower,Because those who I see are not seen,Those who see me are rude indeed. So blow, blow dear winter, just blow along me!

I am lover of words... I am wickedly drunk with the magic of words... the poetic nature whispers through and to my very heart and soul.

They say that I am a poetI wonder what they would say if they saw me from the inside I bottleemotions and place them into the sea for others to unbottle ondistant shores I am unsure as to whether they ever reach and forthat matter as to whether I ever get my point acrossor my love

I have my priorities and I know my purpose. I do not Praise God because of my pain but I praise Him because of what the pain is producing.

You don’t know anything, but I know even less.

Base words are uttered only by the baseAnd can for such at once be understood;But noble platitudes — ah, there's a caseWhere the most careful scrutiny is neededTo tell a voice that's genuinely goodFrom one that's base but merely has succeeded.

To go where no one else has ever gone before is the secret of heroism.

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

Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings and some are treasured for their markings-- they cause the eyes to melt or the body to shriek without pain. I have never seen one fly, but sometimes they perch on the hand. Mist is when the sky is tired of flight and rests its soft machine on the ground: then the world is dim and bookish like engravings under tissue paper. Rain is when the earth is television. It has the properites of making colours darker. Model T is a room with the lock inside -- a key is turned to free the world for movement, so quick there is a film to watch for anything missed. But time is tied to the wrist or kept in a box, ticking with impatience. In homes, a haunted apparatus sleeps, that snores when you pick it up. If the ghost cries, they carry it to their lips and soothe it to sleep with sounds. And yet, they wake it up deliberately, by tickling with a finger. Only the young are allowed to suffer openly. Adults go to a punishment room with water but nothing to eat. They lock the door and suffer the noises alone. No one is exempt and everyone's pain has a different smell. At night, when all the colours die, they hide in pairs and read about themselves -- in colour, with their eyelids shut.

i wanted to destroy you.you are mine to ruin.something so beautifulshould only exist for me.

too much explanation can take the pleasure out of any poetry.(Preface, vii)

If on thoughts of death we are fed,Thus, a coffin, became my bed.

Poetry is a sort of truancy, a dream within the dream of life, a wild flower planted among our wheat.

Up the still, glistening beaches,Up the creeks we will hie,Over banks of bright seaweedThe ebb-tide leaves dry.We will gaze, from the sand-hills,At the white, sleeping town;At the church on the hill-side—And then come back down.Singing: "There dwells a loved one,But cruel is she!She left lonely for everThe kings of the sea.(from poem 'The Forsaken Merman')

I thought at times that poetry might be an elegant way of screaming.

The first year was like icing. Then the cake started to show through …

Each and every words count.Each and every thoughts count.

They blossomed, they did not talk about blossoming.

She was resilientA brave soldier when life tested herIt didn't matter that she did strange thingslike stand tall under the rainletting the drops kiss her skinthinking the storm was romanticIt was hard to quiet hernot that you would want towhen she spoke, it was captivatingHer heart was like a candlewarm and delicatejust what you needed during darknessSometimes, she'd go off and explore the worldtest her limitslaugh too muchcry when humans were cruelIt wasn't hard to see why people envied herYou'd come to realize she was a lionand she could not be tamed.

A billion stars go spinning through the night,glittering above your head,But in you is the presence that will bewhen all the stars are dead.

a single poemthe thing that can keep melight on my feet,when my soul isheavy with sorrow.

Be as audaciousAs you wish.By all means look to the heavens.

Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtle; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend.

The starvation of a child has no justification, even if the crops have failed, or the population is too large.

I exaggerateThere is a lie in my truthLook! My soul is blue

The more desperate the situation, the more opportunity for miracle. If you need something from God, you need to be at the right place, the right position and at the right time

Haleine contre haleine, échauffe-moi la vie,Mille et mille baisers donne-moi je te prie,Amour veut tout sans nombre, amour n’a point de loiTranslated: Breath against breath warms my life.A thousand kisses give me I pray thee.Love says it all without number,love knows no law.

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.

He is deaf, and keen to accept,any economical operation,that will correct his situation.He visited the doctor best,and started talking on subject,like the after-effects, and if any threats.The doctor medically checked,and asked him what he expects?He expressed, he wants to be addressed-in words, and not in signs.And how keen he is, to have his ears listening.He wants to listen the echo of,sun-set over that crimson dawn.He is keen to know, the sound of,a blooming rose.He wants to know what it sounds like,when a seedling grows.But Doctor- if you say: You are incapable,then I better get away,for then there is- nothing worth to be heard,in your seemingly wordy world.

You will recognize your own path when you come upon it because you will suddenly have all the energy and imagination you will ever need.

the best part waspulling down theshadesstuffing the doorbellwith ragsputting the phonein therefrigeratorand going to bedfor 3 or 4days. and the next bestpartwasnobody evermissedme.

And I learned what is obvious to a child. That life is simply a collection of little lives, each lived one day at a time. That each day should be spent finding beauty in flowers and poetry and talking to animals. That a day spent with dreaming and sunsets and refreshing breezes cannot be bettered.

Why there isn't any drama in my lifeSo I'll crawl on the cottonfield with a fifeWhy to have a dream in vain my life begsAm a house gecko, I eat flies and lay eggsMy death surely doesn't yield a headline and allI'll break law by pissing on a castle's wallFor my death there wouldn't be a weeping meniFrom the name of Lady Canning there's ledikeniOne foot on heaven and one foot on hell, hangingOne cannon and two cannonballs dangling.

Be a poet in action as well as in words.

There was a time when I do not understand poetry.

Oh my…!Love can be troubled somber,mournful and yet subtle and precise. Love is a chaotic thing, my dear!

If you had told me, though, when I was twenty-four that I would write about Skokie, Illinois, where I grew up, I would have said, ‘You’re out of your mind. Why would I have Skokie in a poem?’ But you become resigned. Your job is to write about the life you actually have.

If one thousand of you participate in the murder of one child, then one thousand of you are a thousand times guilty.

A midst deceit I found the truth;there in the rough I found a diamond.And from the moment we met,I think of no one elseToday I choose to be, to live and breathe;to dream, to weep, and to sing in free verse.And you, the object of my delight:a like-minded opposite I am myself with,a mind-fuck times six, seven, eight thousand and three.I know that you love me with every inch of your deep.

I thought leaving you would be easy, just walking out the door but I keep getting pinned against it with my legs around your waist and it’s like my lips want you like my lungs want air, it’s just what they where born to do so I am sitting at work thinking of you cutting vegetables in my kitchen your hair in my shower drain your fingers on my spine in the morningwhile we listen to Muddy Waters, I knowyou will never be the one I call home but the way you talk about poems like marxists talk of revolution it makes me want to keep trying. I’m still looking for reasons to love you.I’m still looking for proof you love me.

I am not collarbones or drunken letters never sent. I am not the way I leave or left or didn’t know how to handle anything,at any time,and I am not your fault.

Every good poem asks a question, and every good poet asks every question.

This is hell, but I planned it. I sawed it,I nailed it, and I will live in it until it kills me.I can nail my left palm to the left-hand crosspiece butI can’t do everything myself. I need a hand to nail the right,a help, a love, a you, a wife.

Nothing is more natural than mutual misunderstanding; the contrary is always surprising. I believe that one never agrees on anything except by mistake, and that all harmony among human beings is the happy fruit of an error.

As human beings we’ve certainly suffered the loss of awe, the loss of sacredness, and the loss of the fact that we’re not here— we’re not put on earth— to shape it anyway we want... You want something to happen with poetry, but it doesn’t make anything happen. So then somebody says, “What’s the use of poetry?” Then you say, “Well, what’s the use of a cloud? What’s the use of a river? What’s the use of a tree?” They don’t make anything happen.

I stand in my own power now, the questions of permission that I used to choke on for my every meal now dead in a fallen heap, and when they tell me that I will fall, I nod. I will fall, I reply, and my words are a whispermy words are a howlI will fall , I say, and the tumbling will be all my own. The skinned palms and oozing knees are holy wounds, stigmata of my She. I will catch my own spilled blood, and not a drop will be wasted.

Serious affairs and history are carefully laid snares for the uninformed.

Love will find you when you least expect it to. It will come unannounced and find you in an unusual moment on the strangest of days!