Poetry Quotes - Page 93

As Borges has taught us, all the books in the library are contemporary. Great poems are like granaries: they are always ready to enlarge their store.

Not reading poetry amounts to a national pastime here.

the poem doesn’t have stanzas, it has a body, the poem doesn’t have lines,/ it has blood, the poem is not written with letters, it’s written/ with grains of sand and kisses, petals and moments, shouts and/ uncertainties.

LITTLE STAR BIG UNIVERSE I love everyone-And everything.The ocean,The sky,The other planets,The people here,The people there.I love to smile,To run and play,I love to work hard,And create everyday.I love to rest,When the long day's through,But most of all,l love thinking of you.

‘Paradise Lost’ was printed in an edition of no more than 1,500 copies and transformed the English language. Took a while. Wordsworth had new ideas about nature: Thoreau read Wordsworth, Muir read Thoreau, Teddy Roosevelt read Muir, and we got a lot of national parks. Took a century. What poetry gives us is an archive, the fullest existent archive of what human beings have thought and felt by the kind of artists who loved language in a way that allowed them to labor over how you make a music of words to render experience exactly and fully.

Pretense cannot sustain blind power.

The Fourth Sign of The Zodiac (Part 3) by Mary OliverI know, you never intended to be in this world.But you’re in it all the same.So why not get started immediately.I mean, belonging to it.There is so much to admire, to weep over.And to write music or poems about.Bless the feet that take you to and fro.Bless the eyes and the listening ears.Bless the tongue, the marvel of taste.Bless touching.You could live a hundred years, it’s happened.Or not.I am speaking from the fortunate platformof many years,none of which, I think, I ever wasted.Do you need a prod?Do you need a little darkness to get you going?Let me be as urgent as a knife, then,and remind you of Keats,so single of purpose and thinking, for a while,he had a lifetime.Mary oliver

Hers is a timeless life weaving through other longer lives like a flash of lightning in a clouded evening sky.

Love is a game of tic-tac-toe,constantly waitingfor the next x or o.

You are alone. But you seems not afraid- though you weary with your groaning; wandering far off in the wilderness and your eyes, consumed because of your grief; waxed old while you're still young.

GATHERING LEAVESSpades take up leavesNo better than spoons,And bags full of leavesAre light as balloons.I make a great noiseOf rustling all dayLike rabbit and deerRunning away.But the mountains I raiseElude my embrace,Flowing over my armsAnd into my face.I may load and unloadAgain and againTill I fill the whole shed,And what have I then?Next to nothing for weight,And since they grew dullerFrom contact with earth,Next to nothing for color.Next to nothing for use.But a crop is a crop,And who's to say whereThe harvest shall stop?

PRETENDING TO DROWNThe only regret is that I waitedlonger than a breathto scatter the sun's reflectionwith my body.New stars burst upon the waterwhen you pulled me in.On the shore, our clothesbegged us to be good boys again.Every stick our feet toucheda snapping turtle, every shadowa water moccasin.Excuses to swim closer to one another.I sank into the depths to see youas the lake saw you: cut in halfby the surface, taut legs kicking,the rest of you sky.Suddenly still, a clear viewof what you knew I wantedto see.When I resurfaced, slick grin,knowing glance; you pushed meback under.I pretended to drown,then swallowed you whole.

A sky full of starsand he was staring at her. —ATTICUS

why do people pour water on concrete expecting something to grow from it" AP

The gristle of the underneath stings in the air of responsibility.

Although personal calling I sense,Who am I? even if I am, I don't know.

We thought everything would be forgotten, but I still remember yourclaws running down my back.I wonder if you still think about us,the way I do.How our legs would crash into each other in the middle of the night, and how we endedup creating the moon in the confines of our beds.

It is always betterto avenge dear ones than to indulge in mourning.For every one of us, living in this worldmeans waiting for our end. Let whoever canwin glory before death. When a warrior is gone,that will be his best and only bulwark.

in a slapfight with Jesusmy face bleedsbecause no one cut their fingernails back then

It’s not magic. I remember because I make comparisons. Not in terms of better or worse, just different. And not all of these memories are great, but they’re mine.Which lends way to believe, that none of our lives are put together on an assembly line. We’re not pre-packaged with memories or programmed with stories. We have to make our own.

When we walk in the sunour shadows are like barges of silence.

Aegean Islands 1940-41Where white stares, smokes or breaks,Thread white, white of plaster and of foam,Where sea like a wall falls;Ribbed, lionish coast,The stony islands which blow into my mindMore often than I imagine my grassy home;To sun one's bones beside theExplosive, crushed-blue, nostril-opening sea(The weaving sea, splintered with sails and foam,Familiar of famous and deserted harbours,Of coins with dolphins on and fallen pillars.)To know the gear and skill of sailing,The drenching race for home and the sail-white houses,Stories of Turks and smoky ikons,Cry of the bagpipe, treadingOf the peasant dancers;The dark breadThe island wine and the sweet dishes;All these were elements in a happinessMore distant now than any date like '40,A. D. or B. C., ever can express.

If emptiness is empty, how can something be borne or awaken from it?

...and when we die we die alone I cry, I cry aloneLike a piece of stone I am thrown into the wavy ocean of lifeto atone...to atoneOnly to atone...

IT'S NOT THE HONEY WHISKEY IN A FRIDAY NIGHT - IT'S THE MANIC SHOW OF POETRY TWEETS THAT TURNS ME ON.

You're asking yourself if you will ever get over it. - I don't believe we ever do. Getting over something implies you floated on past the pain, blew kisses, and waved goodbye while leaping to freedom. I've never been able to jump after having the contents of my heart scattered and sewn over fields that will produce memory-laden blooms. The thing is... you get through it. But the seeds have been planted. Those memories grow. And every morning I still hear: 'He loved me. He loved me not.

The mere ambition to write a poem is enough to kill it.

Lord, may the pain be ours, And the weakness that it brings, But at least give us the strength, Of not showing it to anyone!

Meredith,' interposed Celia, 'makes one of his women, Emilia in England, say that poetry is like talking on tiptoe; like animals in cages, always going to one end and back again.

We hold on to poetry because it lights a fire in our soul and keeps our bodies warm.

You exalt me Bati,This is the message to the society,Brightest day demands struggling, suffering and sacrifice,heroic labor would suffice.

Dead tree branches rattled,the cold wind seethed, it prattled of abominations about to unfold.A lone wolf howled,the full moon it prowled,ready for evils untold.

I see You, Every time I look into Buddha’s eyes. I give myself to You. Every time I alter one of Your 1,000s names. Honestly & fully I love You. Through Christ and Maria, Shiva and Shakti, Krishna and Radha, With every day that passes and every breath I take. I enter gratitude for receiving Your Love. Obeying Your Laws of Truthfulness and Ahimsa, Weaving Prana With hearts and souls of Gaia. Through mysticism, shamanism, sufism, and ecstatic meditations. I yearn to touch You, to feel You, to be You. Within this amazing Journey of Awareness of Your Consciousness.

Dining at the rare reasonTo get between the circumstanceAnd start milking the Caesars For what enters the earsAnd is for their eyes to air and advise.

Door of passage to the other side, the soul frees itself in stride.

He who mocks the infant's faithShall be mock'd in age and death.He who shall teach the child to doubtThe rotting grave shall ne'er get out.He who respects the infant's faithTriumphs over hell and death.The child's toys and the old man's reasonsAre the fruits of the two seasons.- "Auguries of Innocence

My house burned downBut anyway, it was afterThe flower petals had already fallen

Nothing reminds us of an awakening more than rain.

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.

You may be a poet and not even know it.

You can make a difference in another person's life and not realize it, just by giving them One Moment of your time, One Memory to recall, One Motion that tells them they are not alone! OM!

...look up and see the madnessorganized in the stars.

and everybody was happy that uncle lee was able to get that scholarship even though you wondered when you could do quadratic equations in your head why you had a basketball scholarship but you always knew that you had to take what they were giving since that was all you were going to get but you never fooled yourself about either the taking or the giving or the needing or the having you just sort of said to yourself I'll have to see what is being offered

I would rather have a man chasing JESUS than a house full of stuffs and garrage filled with big cars.

A newborn is murderous/but can't do anything about it.

I am stuffing your mouth with yourpromises and watching you vomit them out upon my face.

Weeping Widows"There is a river that cuts ThroughThe heart of EveAnd flows throughParadise's back window.It streams into A bottomless wellThat rolls down to hellWith the tears of theWeeping widows.The women stand along the well,And cryWhile singing gray lullabiesAs orphaned childrenLight up candles to put on palm leavesTo push into the streamWith petals of jasmine And pieces of tangerine,Then sit back and wait for their fatherTo show up over the horizon Where his heart still beatsIn their dreams.

Poetry for me is a result of lyrical meditation, pre-verbal in origin, and much of the craft has to do with finding a contemporary diction that embodies, at times subverts but never betrays that pre-verbal lyrical source: the presence of song before it is sung.

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

A life lived outside of one's giftedness is a complete and utter travesty. It deprives the world of the beauty we each bring to our respective space(s). It leaves us all less fulfilled and enlightened.

Broken.As I search for hope,In the same eyesI lost it.

Poetry is not an art, it's a symptom.

If you have the words, there's always a chance that you'll find the way.

It was at that agethat poetry came in search of me.

i am infinitely yearningbrimmingand overflowingin wordsi discoverit’s another wayfor meto be in tears.

The sea loved the moonWhen she was supposed to love the shore.The moon knewAnd hence made his intentions known. That she should love the shoreWho was destined for her.Yet his protests seemed weak. And even when he pushed her towards the shore-She always retreated back.To want, to need, to love the moonFor all she's worth.Everyone said, it wasn't meant to happen.Yet, the Tsunami rose that night for their union.

To write a poem you must have a streak of arrogance-- not in real life I hope. In real life try to be nice. It will save you a hell of a lot of trouble and give you more time to write.

The River SwishDeftly maneuvered through the dark green abyss ~The wooden raft seemed in tune with this ~Canorous rush of theriver swish....

The wind is made of haunting souls that moan and groan in whistles and whispers. This ghostly choir chills the breeze and orchestrates a rise of goose bumps on my skin.

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.