Poets Quotes - Page 5

We are all poets, really.

Oh, there are no living poets, Miss Van Damn. We're not entirely sure there ever were. They've found some shreds of sonnets in England and, embedded in a chalk wall of a cave in France, some yet undetermined thing which might be the legendary inward eye. But all evidence, such as it is, suggests that, if there ever were poets, they were all burned into extinction during the interglacial period of despair.

The seasonal urge is strong in poets. Milton wrote chiefly in winter. Keats looked for spring to wake him up (as it did in the miraculous months of April and May, 1819). Burns chose autumn. Longfellow liked the month of September. Shelley flourished in the hot months. Some poets, like Wordsworth, have gone outdoors to work. Others, like Auden, keep to the curtained room. Schiller needed the smell of rotten apples about him to make a poem. Tennyson and Walter de la Mare had to smoke. Auden drinks lots of tea, Spender coffee; Hart Crane drank alcohol. Pope, Byron, and William Morris were creative late at night. And so it goes.

I wish to stay drenchedforeverin those rain-blue eyesin those...soul-reaching crystalsnot moving a musclenor breathingjustsavoringthis turquoise acheagainst my heart.

What we call life is only talk of nature.

One of Wordsworth's Lake District neighbours remarked upon hearing of the poet's death "I suppose his son will carry on the business."

Eternity is a glorious word, but eternity is ice.

Poets may be delightful creatures in the meadow or the garret, but they are menaces on the assembly line.

Poets are simply those who have made a profession ans a lifestyle of being in touch with their bliss.

Superior poets say what they really feel. Mediocre poets say what they decide to feel. Inferior poets say what they think they should feel.

i have laughedmore than daffodilsand cried more than June.

I'd had a little feeling of destiny. Because, you see, what I mean about affinities is true from friendships down to even the accidental glance at someone on the street-there's always a definite reason somewhere. I think even the poets would agree with me.

For a moment at least, be a smile on someone else’s face.

A smiling lie is a whirlwind, easy to enter, but hard to escape.

...if you do not even understand what words say,how can you expect to pass judgementon what words conceal?

Maybe you could be mine / or maybe we’ll be entwined / aimless in this sexless foreplay.

Only the writers can change or fix the past by going back to edit old works

Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom. I am not, as will be seen, in any sense attacking logic: I only say that this danger does lie in logic, not in imagination.

A rain like melting pillows…a rain so beautifulI could neverhave let go ofif not certainthat someday...it would find its wayinto my poem.

This seems to me a philosophical question, and therefore irrelevant, question. A poet's destiny is to love.

We have conversations with each other most nights - Sylvia Plath and me!

Imperfection is my ticket, perfection is my pursuit

It is as if the soul of the continent is weeping. Why does it weep? It weeps for the bones of the buffalo. It weeps for magic that has been forgotten. It weeps for the decline of poets.It weepsfor the black people who think like white people.It weepsfor the Indians who think like settlers.It weepsfor the children who think like adults.It weepsfor the free who think like prisoners.Most of all, it weepsfor the cowgirls who think like cowboys.

Nor is there wanting in the pressSome spirit to stand simply forth,Heroic in it nakedness,Against the uttermost of earth.The tale of earth's unhonored thingsSounds nobler there than 'neath the sun;And the mind whirls and the heart sings,And a shout greets the daring one.

When there's a moon the shadows in the house grow larger;invisible hands draw back the curtains,a pallid finger writes forgotten words on dustof the piano...

My face responds without authorization from my brain, so the resulting smile feels like the biggest, most unguarded, goofiest smile I’ve ever unleashed in my entire life. I didn’t even know my face could do this. It’s like there were hidden zippers in my cheeks. Jesus. This must be what feelings are. This is why people write poems! I get it now. I get it, and I want more.

What stirs lyrical poets to their finest flights is neither the delight of the senses nor the fruitful contentment of the settled couple; not the satisfaction of love, but its passion. And passion means suffering.

For a poet reality is mysterious, imaginations are magical, and perceptions are magnificent.

I'd spent way more years worrying about how to look like a poet -- buying black clothes, smearing on scarlet lipstick, languidly draping myself over thrift-store furniture -- than I had learning how to assemble words in some discernible order.

Poetry is a finikin thing of airThat lives uncertainly and not for longYet radiantly beyond much lustier blurs.

There’s no money in poetry, but there’s no poetry in money, either

I am filled time and againwith a heart-aching wonder when I thinkof the fireand frost of memoriesof the everlastingnessof lovethe solace of familyand the power of prayer.

Annant is Pickwick paperless, the hunter of wisdom and due to Lovelace heart, a budding poet-ass.

you wanted it all to make senseand you wanted the most complicated answer, but the answer is simple.just be.

Cities get built out of poet's dreams.

Love is almost never simple.

For a game, you don’t need a teacher.

But that so many scholars are barbarians does not much matter so long as a few of them are ready to help with their specialized knowledge the few independent thinkers, that is to say the poets, who try to to keep civilization alive.

Once, poets were magicians. Poets were strong, stronger than warriors or kings — stronger than old hapless gods. And they will be strong once again.

We don’t know anything about silent sages, buried knowledge, the eye of the mute poet, serene seers, yet how many talkative destroyers, prophets and ideologues, teachers and beautifiers there are on the other side.

A poet is an unhappy being whose heart is torn by secret suffrings, but whose lips are so strangely formed that when the sighs and the cries escape them, they sound like beautiful music. People corwd around the poet and say to him: "Sing for us soon again;" that is as much to say, "May new sufferings torment your soul.

Now that we are all so smart, we don’t easily find resolutions.

Young poets are too apt to consider themselves “children of the mist” – they must dwell apart from men and contemn their kind, or they fear they shall be only taken for common-place characters. They forget that poetry is the language which speaks to all hearts—and that instead of cherishing the sacred fire as a lonely light, as one that burns in a charnel house, they should bring it forth in its beauty and brightness as a guide to the pleasant places and sparkling waters of earth’s happiness and the radiant messenger of heaven’s exalted hopes. And they should rejoice and be glad that to them the kindling of such high imagination is given. ~ Sarah Josepha Hale Ladies Magazine, November 1830From the Introduction to Cherishing the Sacred Fire

Although my road to writing seems like it may have come easily, there were a few bumps in that road. I didn’t get a lot of encouragement from friends, although my family were great supporters. I also had many…what you would call “mind-boggling” moments, when I would doubt myself and what I was writing. It has been said that we, ourselves, are our own worst critics.All the hard work had payed off though, and I created a children’s book that I am proud of, and an unforgettable little girl that will touch the hearts of many.”-Nina Jean Slack

Authority forgets a dying king

We dreamt of a crappy apartment somewhereMaking love while we let the midnight airFlow through the open window, into our closed heartsLeft bitter from heartbreak and too much time apart

Always write exactly what you’re feeling at the exact moment when writing something like poetry or an emotional novel. Put yourself, pour all emotions into your work…make yourself cry, feel joy if you are writing joyful things, feel lovey if it calls for it…just put your heart and soul into all that you do…then you will be a good writer when you can make whoever reads your work, feel." -Nina Jean Slack

Poets can't march in protest or do that sort of thing. I feel that's against the rules, and pointless. If mankind wants a great big final bang, that's what it'll get. One should never protest against anything unless it's going to have an effect. None of those marches do. One should either be silent or go straight to the top.

As I read you I fell in love with the holes between your words and I loved you most on the days you could not love yourself.

I am talking about the responsibility of the poet, who is irresponsible by definition, an anarchist enamored of a solar order and never of the new order or whatever slogan makes five or six hundred million men march in step in a parody of order.

We built tall buildings, but we have not become any taller.

If you could have walked on the planet before humans lived here, maybe the Ivory Coast would have seemed more beautiful than La Côte d'Azur.

Still, no one finally knows what a poet is supposed either to be or to do. Especially in this country, one takes on the job—because all that one does in America is considered a "job"—with no clear sense as to what is required or where one will ultimately be led. In that respect, it is as particular an instance of a "calling" as one might point to. For years I've kept in mind, "Many are called but few are chosen." Even so "called," there were no assurances that one would be answered.

Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.

My job as a poet, is not to succumb to despair but to find in words, an antidote for the emptiness of existence.

Protesters are still on the fringes like satellites, revolving around the system. But prophets and poets lead us into a new world, beyond simply yelling at the old one.

Poetry must be as new as foam and as old as the rock.

. . . a racer snake / slicking off / like a signature into the weeds.

Stars are only the rain of the Absolute.

Only poets and philosophers see the world as it really is, for only to them is it given to live without illusions. To see clearly is to not act.