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4b97e52 "Pirate Captain Jim "Walk the plank," says Pirate Jim "But Captain Jim, I cannot swim." "Then you must steer us through the gale." "But Captain Jim, I cannot sail." "Then down with the galley slaves you go." "But Captain Jim, I cannot row." poetry Shel Silverstein
4c6029d "Because these wings are no longer wings to fly But merely vans to beat the air The air which is now thoroughly small and dry Smaller and dryer than the will poetry T.S. Eliot
a8a9d1f A tough life needs a tough language--and that is what poetry is. That is what literature offers--a language powerful enough to say how it is. language life literature poetry reading words Jeanette Winterson
0a1c6ae "I really don't know what 'I love you' means. I think it means "Don't leave me here alone." love poetry sonnet Neil Gaiman
c79359b If life transcends death Then I will seek for you there If not, then there too chrisjen-avasarala haiku life-after-death love love-poetry poetry James S.A. Corey
7f56ff1 Don't ask me any questions. I've seen how things that seek their way find their void instead. poet poetry poetry-quotes poets Federico García Lorca
a7d9b38 I wander thro' each charter'd street, Near where the charter'd Thames does flow. And mark in every face I meet Marks of weakness, marks of woe. In every cry of every Man, In every Infants cry of fear, In every voice: in every ban, The mind-forg'd manacles I hear How the Chimney-sweepers cry Every blackning Church appalls, And the hapless Soldiers sigh Runs in blood down Palace walls But most thro' midnight streets I hear How the youthful Harlots curse Blasts the new-born Infants tear And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse. poetry William Blake
24486c4 I am a student of life, and don't want to miss any experience. There's poetry in this sort of thing, you know--or perhaps you don't know, but it's all the same. knowledge life poetry H.P. Lovecraft
7d09ba1 The loss of these tastes [for poetry and music] is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature. character-building emotions intellect music poetry stimulation taste Charles Darwin
ffbf722 I take thee at thy word: Call me but love, and I'll be new baptized; Henceforth I never will be Romeo. birth identity inspiration inspirational life love name names new-life poetry resurrection shakespeare theater theatre William Shakespeare
282fdd6 When you cried, I learned what helplessness tastes like. Because all I could do was swallow. poetry swoon Penny Reid
70621c1 Open the fridge and put My heart on a plate. I'm just as you left me, and I taste even better leftover. dan-humphrey don-t-you-forget-about-me gossip-girl poem poetry Cecily von Ziegesar
ee38d30 At first I protested and rebelled against poetry. I was about to deny my poetic worlds. I was doing violence to my illusions with analysis, science, and learning Henry's language, entering Henry's world. I wanted to destroy by violence and animalism my tenuous fantasies and illusions and my hypersensitivity. A kind of suicide. The ignominy awakened me. Then June came and answered the cravings of my imagination and saved me. Or perhaps she killed me, for now I am started on a course of madness. idealism imagination poetry Anaïs Nin
bbffa21 "Reading someone's poetry is like seeing them naked" -Davis Pritchett" poetry turtles-all-the-way-down John Green
895b7a5 If poets often commit suicide, it is not because their poems are bad but because they are good. Whoever heard of a bad poet committing suicide? The reader is only a little better off. The exhilaration of a good poem lasts twenty minutes, an hour at most. Unlike the scientist, the artist has reentry problems that are frequent and catastrophic. poetry reentry-problems suicide Walker Percy
0c3ac01 "The way we are living, choices life living poetry Seamus Heaney
a72ffe1 This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper. mortality poetry T.S. Eliot
1ff7ef8 "I couldn't tell fact from fiction, Or if the dream was true My only sure prediction poetry Maya Angelou (Author)
8027085 "All war is based in deception (cfr. Sun Tzu, "The Art of War"). Definition of deception: "The practice of deliberately making somebody believe things that are not true. An act, a trick or device entended to deceive somebody". Thus, all war is based in metaphor. All war necessarily perfects itself in poetry. Poetry (since indefinable) is the sense of seduction. Therefore, all war is the storytelling of seduction, and seduction is the nature of war." poetry seduction war Pola Oloixarac
8d9ba92 But writing poems and letters doesn't seem to do much good. poetry Sylvia Plath
b40cace A FEATHER. A feather is trimmed, it is trimmed by the light and the bug and the post, it is trimmed by little leaning and by all sorts of mounted reserves and loud volumes. It is surely cohesive. feathers poetry Gertrude Stein
1a06e5f I love the writers of my thousand books. It pleases me to think how astonished old Homer, whoever he was, would be to find his epics on the shelf of such an unimaginable being as myself, in the middle of an unrumored continent. I love the large minority of the writers on my shelves who have struggled with words and thoughts and, by my lights, have lost the struggle. All together they are my community, the creators of the very idea of books, poetry, and extended narratives, and of the amazing human conversation that has taken place across the millennia, through weal and woe, over the heads of interest and utility. literature poetry reading words writers Marilynne Robinson
1d4d9da You are my brother and I love you. I love you worshipping in your church, kneeling in your temple, and praying in your mosque. You and I and all are children of one religion, for the varied paths of religion are but the fingers of the loving hand of the Supreme Being, extended to all, offering completeness of spirit to all, anxious to receive all. love poetry tolerance Kahlil Gibran
33a1d17 I wasn't reading poetry because my aim was to work my way through English Literature in Prose A-Z. But this was different. I read [in, by T.S. Eliot]: I started to cry. (...)The unfamiliar and beautiful play made things bearable that day, and the things it made bearable were another failed family--the first one was not my fault, but all adopted children blame themselves. The second failure was definitely my fault. I was confused about sex and sexuality, and upset about the straightforward practical problems of where to live, what to eat, and how to do my A levels. I had no one to help me, but the T.S. Eliot helped me. So when people say that poetry is a luxury, or an option, or for the educated middle classes, or that it shouldn't be read at school because it is irrelevant, or any of the strange and stupid things that are said about poetry and its place in our lives, I suspect that the people doing the saying have had things pretty easy. A tough life needs a tough language--and that is what poetry is. That is what literature offers--a language powerful enough to say how it is. It isn't a hiding place. It is a finding place. poetry power-of-words reading Jeanette Winterson
d998b68 Such a small, pure object a poem could be, made of nothing but air a tiny string of letters, maybe small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. But it could blow everybody's head off. poetry Mary Karr
62ebb0c Soft you day, be velvet soft, My true love approaches, Look you bright, you dusty sun, Array your golden coaches. Soft you wind, be soft as silk My true love is speaking. Hold you birds, your silver throats, His golden voice I'm seeking. Come you death, in haste, do come My shroud of black be weaving, Quiet my heart, be deathly quiet, My true love is leaving. maya-angelou poetry Maya Angelou
cecd3d8 In Irena's head the alcohol plays a double role: it frees her fantasy, encourages her boldness, makes her sensual, and at the same time it dims her memory. She makes love wildly, lasciviously, and at the same time the curtain of oblivion wraps her lewdness in an all-concealing darkness. As if a poet were writing his greatest poem with ink that instantly disappears. drinking forget forgetting love personality poet poetry sex writing Milan Kundera
e88ebfc Requiescat Tread lightly, she is near Under the snow, Speak gently, she can hear The daisies grow. All her bright golden hair Tarnished with rust, She that was young and fair Fallen to dust. Lily-like, white as snow, She hardly knew She was a woman, so Sweetly she grew. Coffin-board, heavy stone, Lie on her breast, I vex my heart alone She is at rest. Peace, Peace, she cannot hear Lyre or sonnet, All my life's buried here, Heap earth upon it. love poetry Oscar Wilde
d0ecf42 I told you in the course of this paper that Shakespeare had a sister; but do not look for her in 's of the poet. She died young--alas, she never wrote a word. She lies buried where the omnibuses now stop, opposite the Elephant and Castle. Now my belief is that this poet who never wrote a word and was buried at the crossroads still lives. She lives in you and in me, and in many other women who are not here tonight, for they are washing up the dishes and putting the children to bed. But she lives; for great poets do not die; they are continuing presences; they need only the opportunity to walk among us in the flesh. dignity dreams empowerment equality feminism fiction gender opportunities poetry self-determination social-norms women women-writers Virginia Woolf
5fdef33 It seems only yesterday I used to believe there was nothing under my skin but light. If you cut me I could shine. But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life, I skin my knees. I bleed. growing-up poetry Billy Collins
e95698c We live longer but less precisely and in shorter sentences. living poetry Wisława Szymborska
ef0a771 Twas noontide of summer, And mid-time of night; And stars, in their orbits, Shone pale, thro' the light Of the brighter, cold moon, 'Mid planets her slaves, Herself in the Heavens, Her beam on the waves. I gazed awhile On her cold smile; Too cold-too cold for me- There pass'd, as a shroud, A fleecy cloud, And I turned away to thee, Proud Evening Star, In thy glory afar, And dearer thy beam shall be; For joy to my heart Is the proud part Thou bearest in Heaven at night, And more I admire Thy distant fire, Than that colder, lowly light. edgar-allan-poe poems poetry stars Edgar Allan Poe
c46d174 "In the flush of love's light we dare be brave And suddenly we see that love costs all we are and will ever be. fear freedom life lonliness love pain poetry Maya Angelou
0327181 I wrote poetry from the time I could write. That was the only way I could begin to express who I was but the poems didn't make sense to my teachers. They didn't rhyme. They were about the wind sounds, the planets' motions, never about who I was or how I felt. I didn't think I felt anything. I was this mind more than a body or a heart. My mind photographing the stars, hearing the wind. dirby-mcdonald dirk-mcdonald poetry Francesca Lia Block
571278b I have emotions that are like newspapers that read themselves. I go for days at a time trapped in the want ads. I feel as if I am an ad for the sale of a haunted house: 18 rooms $37,000 I'm yours ghosts and all. ghosts past poetry ruins sadness Richard Brautigan
693987f The moon people do not eat by swallowing food but by smelling it. Their money is poetry - actual poems, written out on pieces of paper whose value is determined by the worth of the poem itself. food inspirational money moon-palace peom planet poetry smelling Paul Auster
af5c4ec How they had dreamed together, he and she... how they had planned, and laughed, and loved. They had lived for a while in the very heart of poetry. poetry Elizabeth von Arnim
e4a649e My love is like to ice, and I to fire; How comes it then that this her cold so great Is not dissolv'd through my so hot desire, But harder grows the more I her entreat? Or how comes it that my exceeding heat Is not delay'd by her heart-frozen cold; But that I burn much more in boiling sweat, And feel my flames augmented manifold! What more miraculous thing may be told, That fire, which all things melts, should harden ice; And ice, which is congeal'd with senseless cold, Should kindle fire by wonderful device! Such is the power of love in gentle mind, That it can alter all the course of kind. poetry Edmund Spenser
bf3bf95 Like delicate lace, So the threads intertwine, Oh, gossamer web Of wond'rous design! Such beauty and grace Wild nature produces... Ughh, look at the spider Suck out that bug's juices! poetry spiders spiderweb Bill Watterson
b823c6f I have no words -- alas! -- to tell The loveliness of loving well! poetry words Edgar Allan Poe
f893dcf I have seen it over and over, the same sea, the same, slightly, indifferently swinging above the stones, icily free above the stones, above the stones and then the world. If you should dip your hand in, your wrist would ache immediately, your bones would begin to ache and your hand would burn as if the water were a transmutation of fire that feeds on stones and burns with a dark gray flame. If you tasted it, it would first taste bitter, then briny, then surely burn your tongue. It is like what we imagine knowledge to be: dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free, drawn form the cold hard mouth of the world, derived from the rocky breasts forever, flowing and drawn, and since our knowledge is historical, flowing, and flown. poetry Elizabeth Bishop
f14b0e3 The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right, White as a knuckle and terribly upset. It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quiet With the O-gape of complete despair. I live here. poetry Sylvia Plath
16311dc "I Dwelt alone In a world of moan, And my soul was a stagnant tide, Till the fair and gentle Eulalie became my blushing bride- Till the yellow-haired young Eulalie became my smiling bride Ah, less-less bright The stars of night Than the eyes of the radiant girl! And never a flake That the vapor can make With the moon-tints of purple and pearl, Can vie with the modest Eulalie's most unregarded curl- Can vie compare with the bright-eyed Eulalie's most humble and careless curl Now Doubt-now Pain Come never again, For her soul gives me sigh for sigh, And all day long Shine, bright and strong, Astarte within the sky, eulalie poetry Edgar Allan Poe
7e9f2a1 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 say that they do not like fighting, will often display Every symptom of wanting to join in the fray. And they Bark bark bark bark bark bark Until you can hear them all over the park. poetry T.S. Eliot
79c8c70 How can I tell Bob that my happiness streams from having wrenched a piece out of my life, a piece of hurt and beauty, and transformed it to typewritten words on paper? How can he know I am justifying my life, my keen emotions, my feeling, by turning it into print? poetry writing Sylvia Plath
f2be030 "One-and-twenty sorts of birds," said Ser Kyle. "One-and-twenty sorts of bird droppings," said Ser Maynard. "You have no poetry in your heart, ser." "You have shit upon your shoulder." cynicism poetry shit George R.R. Martin
309b7ea "Flow gently, sweet Afton, amang thy green braes, Flow gently, I'll sing thee a song in thy praise; My Mary's asleep by thy murmuring stream, Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream. Thou stock dove whose echo resounds thro' the glen, Ye wild whistly blackbirds in yon thorny den, Thou green crested lapwing thy screaming forbear, I charge you, disturb not my slumbering fair. How lofty, sweet Afton, thy neighboring hills, Far mark'd with the courses of clear winding rills; There daily I wander as noon rises high, My flocks and my Mary's sweet cot in my eye. How pleasant thy banks and green valleys below, Where, wild in the woodlands, the primroses blow; There oft, as mild evening weeps over the lea, The sweet-scented birk shades my Mary and me. Thy crystal stream, Afton, how lovely it glides, And winds by the cot where my Mary resides; How wanton thy waters her snowy feet lave, As, gathering sweet flowerets, she stems thy clear wave. Flow gently, sweet Afton, amang thy green braes, Flow gently, sweet river, the theme of my lays; My Mary's asleep by thy murmuring stream, nature poetry Robert Burns
6a4bd86 "Since when," he asked, beginnings-and-endings endings poetry Seamus Heaney
daa5abb Each month is gay, Each season nice, When eating Chicken soup With rice children poetry Maurice Sendak
8c7af81 As often as we made love I remembered what my poet told me, that this man was born of a goddess, the force that moves the stars and the waves of the sea and couples the animals in the fields in spring, the power of passion, the light of the evening star. mythology passion poetry Ursula K. Le Guin
5ffde6d People nowadays think that scientists exist to instruct them, poets, musicians, etc. to give them pleasure. The idea that these have something to teach them - that does not occur to them. music poetry science Ludwig Wittgenstein
c0c72de The world is holy! The soul is holy! The skin is holy! The nose is holy! The tongue and cock and hand and asshole holy! Everything is holy! everybody's holy! everywhere is holy! everyday is in eternity! Everyman's an angel! poetry Allen Ginsberg
d4cd5ee poems are small moments of enlightenment poet poetry poetry-life poetry-quotes writing writing-craft Natalie Goldberg
cb9d663 Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning, every poem an epitaph. death poetry T.S. Eliot
45613d6 A ring-whorled prow rode in the harbour, ice-clad, outbound, a craft for a prince. They stretched their beloved lord in his boat, laid out by the mast, amidships, the great ring-giver. Far fetched treasures were piled upon him, and precious gear. I have never heard before of a ship so well furbished with battle tackle, bladed weapons and coats of mail. The massed treasure was loaded on top of him: it would travel far on out into the ocean's sway. They decked his body no less bountifully with offerings than those first ones did who cast him away when he was a child and launched him alone over the waves. And they set a gold standard up high above his head and let him drift to wind and tide, bewailing him and mourning their loss. No man can tell, no wise man in hall or weathered veteran knows for certain who salvaged that load. burial poetry Seamus Heaney
092f689 "Miaow Consider me. I sit here like Tiberius, inscrutable and grand. I will let "I dare not" wait upon "I would" and bear the twangling of your small guitar because you are my owl and foster me with milk. Why wet my paw? Just keep me in a bag and no one knows the truth. I am familiar with witches and stand a better chance in hell than you for I can dance on hot bricks, leap your height and land on all fours. I am the servant of the Living God. I worship in my way. Look into these slit green stones and follow your reflected lights into the dark. Michel, Duc de Montaigne, knew. You don't play with me. I play with you." poetry Mark Haddon
b974cbf "I would rather go mad, gone down the dark road to Mexico, heroin dripping in my veins, eyes and ears full of marijuana, eating the god Peyote on the floor of a mudhut on the border or laying in a hotel room over the body of some suffering man or woman; rather jar my body down the road, crying by a diner in the Western sun; rather crawl on my naked belly over the tincans of Cincinnati; rather drag a rotten railroad tie to a Golgotha in the Rockies; rather, crowned with thorns in Galveston, nailed hand and foot in Los Angeles, raised up to die in Denver, pierced in the side in Chicago, perished and tombed in New Orleans and resurrected in 1958 somewhere on Garret Mountain, come down roaring in a blaze of hot cars and garbage, streetcorner Evangel in front of City I-Tall, surrounded by statues of agonized lions, with a mouthful of shit, and the hair rising on my scalp, screaming and dancing in praise of Eternity annihilating the sidewalk, annihilating reality, screaming and dancing against the orchestra in the destructible ballroom of the world, blood streaming from my belly and shoulders drugs life madness poetry Allen Ginsberg
5e58518 Poetry destroyed? Genius banished? No! Mediocrity, no: do not let envy prompt you to the thought. No; they not only live, but reign, and redeem: and without their divine influence spread everywhere, you would be in hell--the hell of your own meanness. genius meanness mediocrity poetry Charlotte Brontë
65084c5 "With heart at rest I climbed the citadel's Steep height, and saw the city as from a tower, Hospital, brothel, prison, and such hells, Where evil comes up softly like a flower. Thou knowest, O Satan, patron of my pain, Not for vain tears I went up at that hour; But like an old sad faithful lecher, fain To drink delight of that enormous trull Whose hellish beauty makes me young again. Whether thou sleep, with heavy vapors full, Sodden with day, or, new appareled, stand In gold-laced veils of evening beautiful, I love thee, infamous city! Harlots and poetry Charles Baudelaire
50270eb We cannot always cry at the right time and who is to say which time is right? madeleine-l-engle poetry right-time Madeleine L'Engle
e012527 A voice that had traversed the centuries, so heavy it broke what it touched, so heavy I feared it would ring in me with eternal resonance, a voice rusty with the sound of curses and the hoarse cries that issue from the delta in the last paroxysm of orgasm. poetry sexuality Anaïs Nin
0a3443a "This man has talent, that man genius And here's the strange and cruel difference: poetry talent w-h-davies William Henry Davies
ab8e816 In their effort to divorce language and experience, deconstructionist critics remind me of middle-class parents who do not allow their children to play in the street. deconstruction language poetry Charles Simic
f0d5a59 One day I wrote her name upon the strand, But came the waves and washed it away: Again I wrote it with a second hand, But came the tide and made my pains his prey. Vain man (said she) that dost in vain assay A mortal thing so to immortalise; For I myself shall like to this decay, And eke my name be wiped out likewise. Not so (quod I); let baser things devise To die in dust, but you shall live by fame; My verse your virtues rare shall eternise, And in the heavens write your glorious name: Where, when as Death shall all the world subdue, Our love shall live, and later life renew. immortality love poetry Edmund Spenser
86ec6d6 One! two! and through and through The vorpal blade went snickersnack! He left it dead, and with its head He went galumphing back. poetry portmanteau Lewis Carroll
4fd9593 Girls are cruelest to themselves. Someone like Emily Bronte, who remained a girl all her life despite her body as a woman, had cruelty drifted up in all the cracks of her like spring snow. girls poem poetry self-cruelty the-glass-essay women Anne Carson
a159808 "Farewell to thee! but not farewell To all my fondest thoughts of thee: poetry Anne Brontë
d81f1ae The kind of poem I produced in those days was hardly anything more than a sign I made of being alive, of passing or having passed, or hoping to pass, through certain intense human emotions. It was a phenomenon of orientation rather than of art, thus comparable to stripes of paint on a roadside rock or to a pillared heap of stones marking a mountain trail. But then, in a sense, all poetry is positional: to try to express one's position in regard to the universe embraced by consciousness, is an immemorial urge. Tentacles, not wings, are Apollo's natural members. Vivian Bloodmark, a philosophical friend of mine, in later years, used to say that while the scientist sees everything that happens in one point of space, the poet feels everything that happens in one point of time. poet poetry Vladimir Nabokov
88eb3ab I'm a poor audience for my memory. She wants me to attend her voice nonstop, but I fidget, fuss, listen and don't, step out, come back, then leave again. She wants all my time and attention. She's got no problem when I sleep. The day's a different matter, which upsets her. She thrusts old letters, snapshots at me eagerly, stirs up events both important and un-, turns my eyes to overlooked views, peoples them with my dead. In her stories I'm always younger. Which is nice, but why always the same story. Every mirror holds different news for me. She gets angry when I shrug my shoulders. And takes revenge by hauling out old errors, weighty, but easily forgotten. Looks into my eyes, checks my reaction. Then comforts me, it could be worse. She wants me to live only for her and with her. Ideally in a dark, locked room, but my plans still feature today's sun, clouds in progress, ongoing roads. At times I get fed up with her. I suggest a separation. From now to eternity. Then she smiles at me with pity, since she knows it would be the end of me too. past poetry Wisława Szymborska
b067309 "I wind up stretched across the couch drugs fear-of-dreaming heroin maybe-i-m-amazed poetry Jim Carroll
7a22f58 Stars in the night,' he said. 'Something something something something, some delight poetry Philippa Gregory
6948b44 Poverty of young men alone behind the stairways, who practice alchemy inside bottle caps, who know the altruism of a last syringe. heroin in-midtown-again needles poetry sharing Jim Carroll
086133b I can't help but notice that you keep writing love poetry to my wife. Well, you see, I married her, which makes her my wife. You know what you might want to try? Writing some poems about the sunset. The sunset isn't fucking married. marriage poetry A.J. Jacobs
2d8dc94 . . . who were run down by the drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality. . . poetry truth Allen Ginsberg
7c28029 "If rape or arson, poison or the knife Has wove no pleasing patterns in the stuff debauchery decadence poetry Charles Baudelaire
c7ebfb3 What does life give me in the end but sorrow? What do love's good and evil send but sorrow? I've only seen one true companion - pain, And I have known no faithful friend but sorrow. love love-quotes-and-sayings poetry quote quotes sadness sorrow Hafez
df8c32a "You know the parlor trick. wrap your arms around your own body and from the back it looks like someone is embracing you her hands grasping your shirt her fingernails teasing your neck from the front it is another story you never looked so alone your crossed elbows and screwy grin you could be waiting for a tailor loneliness poetry Billy Collins
2e215de La poesia, en un primer impulso, destruye los objetos que aprehende, los restituye, mediante esa destruccion, a la inasible fluidez de la existencia del poeta, y a ese precio espera encontrar la identidad del mundo y del hombre. Pero al mismo tiempo que realiza un desasimiento, intenta asir (captar) ese desasimiento. Y lo unico que le es dado hacer es sustituir el desasimiento a las cosas asidas (captadas) de la vida reducida: no puede evitar que el desasimiento pase a ocupar el lugar de las cosas. poetry Georges Bataille
184bc35 She's always looking for poetry and passion and sensitivity, the whole Romantic kitchen. I live on a rather simpler diet.' 'Prose and pudding?' 'I don't expect attractive men necessarily to have attractive souls. poetry romantic John Fowles
4487d03 Let me begin again as a speck of dust caught in the night winds sweeping out to sea. Let me begin this time knowing the world is salt water and dark clouds, the world is grinding and sighing all night, and dawn comes slowly, and changes nothing. poetry Philip Levine
1d669ba I began composing the next poem, the one that was to be written next. Not the last poem of those I had read, but the poem written in the head of someone who may never have existed but who had certainly written another poem nonetheless, and just never had the chance to commit it to ink and the page. myth poetry Steve Erickson
555d471 My choices are rejections, since there is no other way, but what I reject is more numerous, denser, more demanding than before. A little poem, a sigh, at the cost of indescribable loss. fear loss poetry rejection Wisława Szymborska
429ca41 i was really into communal living and we were all / such free spirits, crossing the country we were / nomads and artists and no one ever stopped / to think about how the one working class housemate / was whoring to support a gang of upper middle class / deadheads with trust fund safety nets and connecticut / childhoods, everyone was too busy processing their isms / to deal with non-issues like class....and it's just so cool / how none of them have hang-ups about / sex work they're all real / open-minded real / revolutionary you know / the legal definition of pimp is / one who lives off the earnings of / a prostitute, one or five or / eight and i'd love to stay and / eat some of the stir fry i've been cooking / for y'all but i've got to go fuck / this guy so we can all get stoned and / go for smoothies tomorrow, save me / some rice, ok? poetry poetry-quotes prostitution Michelle Tea
e03c1df In spring of youth it was my lot To haunt of the wide world a spot The which I could not love the less- So lovely was the loneliness Of a wild lake, with black rock bound, And the tall pines that towered around. But when the Night had thrown her pall Upon that spot, as upon all, And the mystic wind went by Murmuring in melody- Then-ah then I would awake To the terror of the lone lake. Yet that terror was not fright, But a tremulous delight- A feeling not the jewelled mine Could teach or bribe me to define- Nor Love-although the Love were thine. Death was in that poisonous wave, And in its gulf a fitting grave For him who thence could solace bring To his lone imagining- Whose solitary soul could make An Eden of that dim lake. lonliness poetry solitude Edgar Allan Poe
340fbe3 contemporary poetry is a kind of Reykjavik, a place where accessibility and intelligence have been fighting a Cold War by proxy for the last half-century. poetry Nick Hornby
2a55dfd Paralytic It happens. Will it go on? ---- My mind a rock, No fingers to grip, no tongue, My god the iron lung That loves me, pumps My two Dust bags in and out, Will not Let me relapse While the day outside glides by like ticker tape. The night brings violets, Tapestries of eyes, Lights, The soft anonymous Talkers: 'You all right?' The starched, inaccessible breast. Dead egg, I lie Whole On a whole world I cannot touch, At the white, tight Drum of my sleeping couch Photographs visit me ---- My wife, dead and flat, in 1920 furs, Mouth full of pearls, Two girls As flat as she, who whisper 'We're your daughters.' The still waters Wrap my lips, Eyes, nose and ears, A clear Cellophane I cannot crack. On my bare back I smile, a buddha, all Wants, desire Falling from me like rings Hugging their lights. The claw Of the magnolia, Drunk on its own scents, Asks nothing of life. paralytic poetry sickness Sylvia Plath
d65b233 "Every song is the remains of love. Every light the remains of time. A knot of time. And every sigh the remains of a cry. poetry Federico García Lorca
e821b61 "After a noticeable silence, he'd recently published a book of technically baffling poems, with line breaks so arbitrary and frequent as to be useless, arrhythmic. On the page they look like some of Charles Bukowski's skinny, chatty, muttering-stuttering antiverses. Impossibly, Mark's words make music, the faraway strains of an irresistible jazz. It's plain to any reader, within a few lines--well, go read the poems and see, Marcus Ahearn traffics with the ineffable. He makes the mind of the speaker present, in that here-and-now where the reader actually reads--that place. Such a rare thing. Samuel Beckett. Jean Follain, Ionesco--the composer Billy Strayhorn. Mark calls his process "psychic improvisation" and referred me to the painter Paul Klee; the term was Klee's. "You just get out a pen and a notebook and let your mind go long," he told me." jazz klee poetry psychic-improvisation writing Denis Johnson
2337f8a "Certainly not! I didn't build a machine to solve ridiculous crossword puzzles! That's hack work, not Great Art! Just give it a topic, any topic, as difficult as you like..." Klapaucius thought, and thought some more. Finally he nodded and said: "Very well. Let's have a love poem, lyrical, pastoral, and expressed in the language of pure mathematics. Tensor algebra mainly, with a little topology and higher calculus, if need be. But with feeling, you understand, and in the cybernetic spirit." "Love and tensor algebra?" Have you taken leave of your senses?" Trurl began, but stopped, for his electronic bard was already declaiming: Come, let us hasten to a higher plane, Where dyads tread the fairy fields of Venn, Their indices bedecked from one to n, Commingled in an endless Markov chain! Come, every frustum longs to be a cone, And every vector dreams of matrices. Hark to the gentle gradient of the breeze: It whispers of a more ergodic zone. In Reimann, Hilbert or in Banach space Let superscripts and subscripts go their ways. Our asymptotes no longer out of phase, We shall encounter, counting, face to face. I'll grant thee random access to my heart, Thou'lt tell me all the constants of thy love; And so we two shall all love's lemmas prove, And in bound partition never part. For what did Cauchy know, or Christoffel, Or Fourier, or any Boole or Euler, Wielding their compasses, their pens and rulers, Of thy supernal sinusoidal spell? Cancel me not--for what then shall remain? Abscissas, some mantissas, modules, modes, A root or two, a torus and a node: The inverse of my verse, a null domain. Ellipse of bliss, converge, O lips divine! The product of our scalars is defined! Cyberiad draws nigh, and the skew mind Cuts capers like a happy haversine. I see the eigenvalue in thine eye, I hear the tender tensor in thy sigh. Bernoulli would have been content to die, Had he but known such a^2 cos 2 phi!" mathematics poetry Stanisław Lem
588afaa [Short Talk on the Sensation of Airplane Takeoff] Well you know I wonder, it could be love running toward my life with its arms up yelling essay love poetry shopping Anne Carson
958e952 "After a noticeable silence, he'd recently published a book of technically baffling poems, with line breaks so arbitrary and frequent as to be useless, arrhythmic. On the page they look like some of Charles Bukowski's skinny, chatty, muttering-stuttering antiverses. Impossibly, Mark's words make music, the faraway strains of an irresistible jazz. It's plain to any reader, within a few lines--well, go read the poems and see, Marcus Ahearn traffics with the ineffable. He makes the mind of the speaker present, in that here-and-now where the reader actually reads--that place. Such a rare thing. Samuel Beckett. Jean Follain, Ionesco--the composer Billy Strayhorn. Mark calls his process "psychic improvisation" and referred me to the painter Paul Klee; the term was Klee's. "You just get out a pen and a notebook and let your mind go long," he told me." -- jazz klee poetry psychic-improvisation writing Denis Johnson
b747f03 The Wisdom of Solomon (Carl) They censor words not the things they denote: It would create less of a stir to drop a piece of shit on Grant's tomb than to write it out in white paint. Because people recognize that's what memorials are for-old bums & dogs to shit on. censorship memorial poetry Allen Ginsberg
8cc7801 When shall I be dead and rid Of all the wrong my father did? How long, how long 'till spade and hearse Put to sleep my mother's curse? poetry suffering T.H. White
3e4aa25 for every mile the feet go the heart goes nine poetry travel E.E. Cummings
92250b8 Long have I dwelt forgotten here In pining woe and dull despair; This place of solitude and gloom Must be my dungeon and my tomb. poetry solitude Anne Brontë
33eb66d "UP You wake up filled with dread. There seems no reason for it. Morning light sifts through the window, there is birdsong, you can't get out of bed. It's something about the crumpled sheets hanging over the edge like jungle foliage, the terry slippers gaping their dark pink mouths for your feet, the unseen breakfast--some of it in the refrigerator you do not dare to open--you will not dare to eat. What prevents you? The future. The future tense, immense as outer space. You could get lost there. No. Nothing so simple. The past, its density and drowned events pressing you down, like sea water, like gelatin filling your lungs instead of air. Forget all that and let's get up. Try moving your arm. Try moving your head. Pretend the house is on fire and you must run or burn. No, that one's useless. It's never worked before. Where is it coming form, this echo, this huge No that surrounds you, silent as the folds of the yellow curtains, mute as the cheerful Mexican bowl with its cargo of mummified flowers? (You chose the colours of the sun, not the dried neutrals of shadow. God knows you've tried.) Now here's a good one: you're lying on your deathbed. You have one hour to live. fear forgiveness future life past poetry Margaret Atwood
b8263e0 I'm Reginald Clark, I'm afraid of the dark So please do not close this book on me. humor poetry Shel Silverstein
ef6d426 It was a scary thought. A man could be surrounded by poetry reading and not know it. poetry Richard Russo
628afa7 "brave love, dream passion poetry Sylvia Plath
c1d54b9 I love my love with a b because she is peculiar. love narration peculiar poetry Gertrude Stein
5fa4a52 "There is the staircase, there is the sun. There is the kitchen, the plate with toast and strawberry jam, your subterfuge, your ordinary mirage. You stand red-handed. You want to wash yourself in earth, in rocks and grass What are you supposed to do with all this loss? In the daylight we know what's gone is gone, but at night it's different. Nothing gets finished, not dying, not mourning; the dead repeat themselves, like clumsy drunks lurching sideways through the doors we open to them in sleep; these slurred guests, never entirely welcome, even those we have loved the most, especially those we have loved the most, returning from where we shoved them away too quickly: from under the ground, from under the water, poetry Margaret Atwood
c212f54 Voll Bluten steht der Pfirsichbaum nicht jede wachst zur Frucht sie schimmern hell wie Rosenschaum durch Blau und Wolkenflucht. Wie Bluten geh'n Gedanken auf hundert an jedem Tag -- lass' bluhen, lass' dem Ding den Lauf frag' nicht nach dem Ertrag! Es muss auch Spiel und Unschuld sein und Blutenuberfluss sonst war' die Welt uns viel zu klein und Leben kein Genuss. beauty blossoms enjoyment growth ideas innocence metaphors peach-tree poetry trees Hermann Hesse
8fd4a93 My prayers, my tears, my wishes, fears, and lamentations, were witnessed by myself and heaven alone. When we are harassed by sorrows or anxieties, or long oppressed by any powerful feelings which we must keep to ourselves, for which we can obtain and seek no sympathy from any living creature, and which yet we cannot, or will not wholly crush, we often naturally seek relief in poetry--and often find it, too--whether in the effusions of others, which seem to harmonize with our existing case, or in our own attempts to give utterance to those thoughts and feelings in strains less musical, perchance, but more appropriate, and therefore more penetrating and sympathetic, and, for the time, more soothing, or more powerful to rouse and to unburden the oppressed and swollen heart. poetry prayer sorrow Anne Brontë
445e407 I came here to be for all and with all, and what I do today in my solitude will be echoed tomorrow by the multitude. What I say now with one heart will be said tomorrow by thousands of hearts... inspirational poetry Kahlil Gibran
9e97653 To grow up is to find the small part you are playing in the extraordinary drama written by somebody else. poetry Madeleine L'Engle
12a773d I take this continent with me into the grave. humor poetry Ray Bradbury
38ad1ef My stupidity gave its blessing to succouring nature, on her knees before God. What I am (my drunken laughter and happiness) is nonetheless at stake, handed over to chance, thrown out into the night, chased away like a dog. The wind of truth responded like a slap to piety's extended cheek. The heart is human to the extent that it rebels (this means: to be a man is 'not to bow down before the law'). A poet doesn't justify -- he doesn't accept -- nature completely. True poetry is outside laws. But poetry ultimately accepts poetry. When to accept poetry changes it into its opposite (it becomes the mediator of an acceptance!) I hold back the leap in which I would exceed the universe, I justify the given world, I content myself with it philosophy poetry Georges Bataille
6b2e11f ...wisely mingled poetry and prose. louisa-may-alcott poetry prose Louisa May Alcott
06f5ff5 That mortal is a fool who, prospering, thinks his life has any strong foundation; since our fortune's course of action is the reeling way a madman takes, and no one person is ever happy all the time. poetry Euripides
2164fb3 I love to move like a mouse inside this puzzle for the body, balancing the wish to be lost with the need to be found. poetry Billy Collins
d476196 The words were good words, Ulysses felt, maybe even great words, but the list was very incomplete. He was just getting started. The words needed to be arranged, fussed with, put in the order of his heart. poetry words writing Kate DiCamillo
60dbbd1 THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ME AND YOU When I hold a rose, I see the soft, velvety petals and smile, because tucked between those precious petals is a special gift - the one of a fragrance, pure and sweet. When you hold a rose, you see the thorns along the stem, and you frown because those thorns can bring you pain and cause you to bleed. I see the gift. You see the tragedy. More and more I fear that one of these days someone will hand me a rose and all I will see are thorns. Talk about tragedy. difference fear fragrance pain poetry rose tragedy Lisa Schroeder
81308e6 O Earth, lie heavily upon her eyes; Seal her sweet eyes weary of watching Earth; Lie close around her; leave no room for mirth With its harsh laughter, nor for sound of sighs. She hath no questions, she hath no replies. christianity death earth funeral poem poetry rebirth suicide the-virgin-suicides Jeffrey Eugenides
3fe6574 Yet gold all is not, that doth gold seem, Nor all good knights, that shake well spear and shield: The worth of all men by their end esteem, And then praise, or due reproach them yield. human-nature poetry Edmund Spenser
f97e1a1 I hate the day, because it lendeth light To see all things, but not my love to see. hatred love poetry Edmund Spenser
d4d3165 So when people say that poetry is a luxury, or an option, or for the educated middle classes, or that it shouldn't be read in school because it is irrelevant, or any of the strange and stupid things that are said about poetry and its place in our lives, I suspect that the people doing the saying have had things pretty easy. A tough life needs a tough language - and that is what poetry is. That is what literature offers - a language powerful enough to to say how it is. It isn't a hiding place. It is a finding place. finding-meaning healing inspiration literature philosophy poetry reading solace tough-life Jeanette Winterson
3294bdf To have touched the feet of Christ is no excuse for mistakes in punctuation. If a man writes well only when he's drunk, then I'll tell him: Get drunk. And if he says that it's bad for his liver, I'll answer: What's your liver? A dead thing that lives while you live, whereas the poems you write live without while. motivation poetry writing Fernando Pessoa
e6a1a7e "What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond marital, filial, national. Love that casts a widening pool of light. Love with no need to preempt grievance. inspirational obama poetry Elizabeth Alexander
43684b4 with shrunken fingers we ate our oranges and bread, shivering in the parked car; though we know we had never been there before, we knew we had been there before. poetry Margaret Atwood
f128d08 Well, let them seize on all they can;-- One treasure still is mine,-- A heart that loves to think on thee, And feels the worth of thine. poetry Anne Brontë
9ea2145 If I'm still wistful about On the Road, I look on the rest of the Kerouac oeuvre--the poems, the poems!--in horror. Read Satori in Paris lately? But if I had never read Jack Kerouac's horrendous poems, I never would have had the guts to write horrendous poems myself. I never would have signed up for Mrs. Safford's poetry class the spring of junior year, which led me to poetry readings, which introduced me to bad red wine, and after that it's all just one big blurry condemned path to journalism and San Francisco. kerouac poetry writing Sarah Vowell
d06de4c In all we do, and hear, and see, Is restless Toil and Vanity. While yet the rolling earth abides, Men come and go like ocean tides life poetry Anne Brontë
12df075 We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. Through the unknown, remembered gate When the last of earth left to discover Is that which was the beginning; At the source of the longest river The voice of the hidden waterfall And the children in the apple-tree Not known, because not looked for But heard, half-heard, in the stillness Between two waves of the sea. Quick now, here, now, always-- A condition of complete simplicity (Costing not less than everything) And all shall be well and All manner of thing shall be well When the tongues of flames are in-folded Into the crowned knot of fire And the fire and the rose are one. poetry time T.S. Eliot
3404e3c "Even as I hold you I think of you as someone gone far, far away. Your eyes the color of pennies in a bowl of dark honey bringing sweet light to someone else your black hair slipping through my fingers is the flash of your head going around a corner your smile, breaking before me, the flippant last turn of a revolving door, emptying you out, changed, away from me. loss love poetry poetry-quotations Alice Walker
102b569 "Aeneas' mother is a star?" "No; a goddess." I said cautiously, "Venus is the power that we invoke in spring, in the garden, when things begin growing. And we call the evening star Venus." He thought it over. Perhaps having grown up in the country, among pagans like me, helped him understand my bewilderment. "So do we, he said. "But Venus also became more...With the help of the Greeks. They call her Aphrodite...There was a great poet who praised her in Latin. Delight of men and gods, he called her, dear nurturer. Under the sliding star signs she fills the ship-laden sea and the fruitful earth with her being; through her the generations are conceived and rise up to see the sun; from her the storm clouds flee; to her the earth, the skillful maker, offers flowers. The wide levels of the sea smile at her, and all the quiet sky shines and streams with light..." It was the Venus I had prayed to, it was my prayer, though I had no such words. They filled my eyes with tears and my heart with inexpressible joy." mythology poetry prayer venus worship Ursula K. Le Guin
e7d3e74 There's something to walking with autumnal thoughts through the evening fog. One likes to compose poems at a time like that. demian poetry Hermann Hesse
9c28e24 What could my mother be to yours? What kin is my father to yours anyway? And how did you and I meet ever? But in love our hearts have mingled like red earth and pouring rain. kinship love poetry Vikram Chandra
1bdbb0a someone's sent a loving note in lines of returning geese and as the moon fills my western chamber as petals dance over the flowing stream again I think of you the two of us living a sadness apart a hurt that can't be removed yet when my gaze comes down my heart stays up poetry Orson Scott Card
2f436b0 Even your graffiti artists spray Rumi on the walls afghans poetry rumi-poetry Khaled Hosseini
05eb9fb Isn't it true that a pleasant house makes winter more poetic, and doesn't winter add to the poetry of a house? intimacy poetry winter Charles Baudelaire
586ad29 Le Poete est semblable au prince des nuees Qui hante la tempete et se rit de l'archer; Exile sur le sol au milieu des huees, Ses ailes de geant l'empechent de marcher. poets literature mundane mundane-reality poetry Charles Baudelaire
32fc9f5 Thus it had come about that she had read far more fiction, and far more poetry, those two sanctuaries of the lonely, than most of her kind. loneliness lonely poetry quote John Fowles
24da240 It never bored them to hear words, words; they breathed them with the cool night air, never stopping to analyse; the name of the poet, Hafiz, Hali, Iqbal, was sufficient guarantee. India--a hundred Indias--whispered outside beneath the indifferent moon, but for the time India seemed one and their own, and they regained their departed greatness by hearing its departure lamented, they felt young again because reminded that youth must fly. poetry E.M. Forster
1cf1ca4 Calligraphy may well be simply an artistic version of another form, that is the ideograms which make up the poem, but then not only does it reflect the character and temperament of the artist but . . . also betrays his heart rate, his breathing. calligraphy poetry Dai Sijie
1103c2a Writing is my passion. Words are the way to know ecstasy. Without them life is barren. The poet insists, language is a body of suffering and when you take up language you take up the suffering too. All my life I have been suffering for words. Words have been the source of the pain and the way to heal. Struck as a child for talking, for speaking out of turn, for being out of my place. Struck as a grown woman for not knowing when to shut up, for not being willing to sacrifice words for desire. Struck by writing a book that disrupts. There are many ways to be hit. Pain is the price we pay to speak the truth. memoir poetry writing Bell Hooks
d53935f "That night we made love "the real way" which we had not yet attempted although married six months. Big mystery. No one knew where to put their leg and to this day I'm not sure we got it right. He seemed happy. You're like Venice he said beautifully. Early next day I wrote a short talk ("On Defloration") which he stole and had published in a small quarterly magazine. Overall this was a characteristic interaction between us. humor husband poetry Anne Carson
14a3149 With wine beside a gently flowing brook - this is the best; Withdrawn from sorrow in some quiet nook - this is the best poetry poetry-quotes wine Hafez
5401b15 This tiger is sprawled So still and so flat, A question arises When glancing thereat. Is he asleep? to be Perfectly frank, He looks more as if He was creamed by a tank! napping naps poetry tiger Bill Watterson
6344e30 I can hear the library humming in the night, a choir of authors murmuring inside their books along the unlit, alphabetical shelves, Giovanni Pontano next to Pope, Dumas next to his son, each one stitched into his own private coat, together forming a low, gigantic chord of language. library literature poetry reading words Billy Collins
39cd680 Blackadder was fifty-four and had come to editing Ash out of pique. He was the son and grandson of Scottish schoolmasters. His grandfather recited poetry on firelight evenings: Marmion, Childe Harold, Ragnarok. His father sent him to Downing College in Cambridge to study under F. R. Leavis. Leavis did to Blackadder what he did to serious students; he showed him the terrible, the magnificent importance and urgency of English literature and simultaneously deprived him of any confidence in his own capacity to contribute to, or change it. The young Blackadder wrote poems, imagined Dr Leavis's comments on them, and burned them. craft literature poetry self-confidence skill writing A.S. Byatt
7896731 "I said to you, "Hold my hand. Nothing bad will happen." These are only words. A father's tricks, It slays your father, your faith in him. Because all I can think tonight is how deep the sea, and how vast, how indifferent. How powerless I am to protect you from it. All I can do is pray." poetry refugees syria Khaled Hosseini
4ba5666 I define influence simply as literary love, tempered by defense. The defenses vary from poet to poet. But the overwhelming presence of love is vital to understanding how great literature works. literary-criticism poetry Harold Bloom
1cd3001 And here face down beneath the sun And here upon earth's noonward height To feel the always coming on The always rising of the night death night poem poet poetry Archibald MacLeish
72c2b68 How long can I be a wall, keeping the wind off? How long can I be Gentling the sun with the shade of my hand, Intercepting the blue bolts of a cold moon? The voices of loneliness, the voices of sorrow Lap at my back ineluctably. How shall it soften them, this little lullaby? fortitude loneliness poetry sorrow strength Sylvia Plath
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