Poetry Quotes

Everything on earth has happened before,nothing is new,but woe to the loverswho fail to discover a fresh blossomin every future kiss.

~ Jaroslav Seifert

They go to Paris to learn how to make bombs and they come back having learned only how to write poetry, which they think is more explosive.

~ Rana Dasgupta

I danced with my shadows until they became part of my light.

~ Jodi Livon

There is no single thing... that is so cut and dried that one cannot attend to its secret whisper which says 'I am more than just my appearance'. If each object quivers with readiness to imply something other than itself, if each perception is a word in a poem dense with connotations, then the poet's selection of any given subject of speculation will become... a means of attuning himself to the rhythms and harmonies of reality at large. ... The notion of a network of correspondence is not an outmoded Romantic illusion: it represents a crucial intuition...

~ Roger Cardinal

Writing the poems, I came to think that regarding is a form of love, but the regarding is not necessarily accurate. In the poems, people are always misperceiving one another. But misperceptions are a part of being alive to others. You don’t need truth or beauty. All you do is perceive. That’s all you need to have loved and lived fully.

~ Joy Katz

Though the body is itsgenesis, a poem is the vision of a p

~ Frank Bidart

It seems an odd idea to my students that poetry, like all art, leads us away from itself, back to the world in which we live. It furnishes the vision. It shows with intense clarity what is already there.

~ Helen Bevington

Be Visionary ...

~ R.m. Engelhardt (Talon)

A wounded heart that loves even more is immortal, it only survives and blooms time after time. If you happen to live in it, there's no safer place in the world than its beating.

~ Nicola An

I am a ghost,Living in ethereal thoughts.

~ Azereth Skivel

Love is not loveWhich alters when it alteration finds,Or bends with the remover to remove.O no, it is an ever-fixed markThat looks on tempests and is never shaken;It is the star to every wand'ring bark,Whose worth's unknown, although his height be t

~ William Shakespeare

The Quiet WorldIn an effort to get people to lookinto each other’s eyes more,and also to appease the mutes,the government has decidedto allot each person exactly one hundred and sixty-seven words, per day.When the phone rings, I put it to my ear without saying hello. In the restaurant I point at chicken noodle soup.I am adjusting well to the new way.Late at night, I call my long distance l

~ Jeffrey Mcdaniel

I touched curiosity,I kissed sin, I felt regret,And I was forgiven.But life won't let me forget.

~ J.a. Anum

We are all a little broken, looking for something whole to hang on to. But sometimes, what seems whole is even more broken than we are.

~ J.a. Anum

Sleep that knits up the raveled sleave of care,The death of each day's life, sore labor's bath,Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,Chief nourisher in life's feast.

~ William Shakespeare

I rest in ease, knowing there are others out there, whispering themselves to sleep, just like me.

~ Charlotte Eriksson

...at dawn, the grains of sleep turn to floating black spots, then out of focus the world tilts, and the cat scratches at the door...

~ John Geddes

Then, what is sacrelige [sic]? If it is nothing more than a rebellion against dogma, it is eventually as meaningless as the dogma it defies, and they are both become hounds ranting in the high grass, never see the boar in the thicket. Only a religious person can perpetrate sacrelige: and if its blasphemy reaches the heart of the question; if it investigates deeply enough to unfold, not the pattern, but the materials of the pattern, and the necessity of a pattern; if it questions so deeply that the doubt it arouses is frightening and cannot be dismissed; then it has done its true sacreligious [sic] work, in the service of its adversary: the only service that nihilism can ever perform.(unused 1949 prefatory note to The Recognitions)

~ William Gaddis

Does one really have to fretAbout enlightenment?No matter what road I travel,I’m going home.

~ Shinsho

When a man has many women in his life to cater to, one of them is bound to come last.

~ Terry A. O'neal

The truth is that, just as in the other imitative arts one imitation is always of one thing, so in poetry the story, as an imitation of action, must represent one action, a complete whole, with its several incidents so closely connected that the transposal or withdrawal of any one of them will disjoin and dislocate the whole. For that which makes no perceptible difference by its presence or absence is no real part of the whole.

~ Aristotle

When African slave Phillis Wheatley wrote poetry, 18 men came to assess whether that was possible.

~ Jacky Fleming

Southern trees bear strange fruit, Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze, Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.Pastoral scene of the gallant south,The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth, Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh, Then the sudden smell of burning flesh. Here is the fruit for the crows to pluck, For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck, For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,Here is a strange and bitter crop.

~ Abel Meeropol

Not a scar just psychological,But as material as roaches,Street corners and billy clubs. A wound reopened systematically,Inflicted with economic anarchy And No Help Wanted signs.

~ Cabrini Gulag

Faith has answers that the ears can't always hear.

~ Margie Mersky

FaithWALK~When I tell you to walk, run like the wind for your guaranteed to fly...

~ Tracie Berry-Mcghee

Happy Easter to you, my friend!This day’s light shall have no end.For Christ did riseIn the golden mornAnd by His life are we reborn.Happy Easter to one and all!The night is over, the sun is tall.The day did break with a tiny beamAnd flooded life with Light supreme.

~ Paul F. Kortepeter

The Incarnation of Christ raised the energy of everything. And when Hopkins placed his conviction of this into poetry, he tended to mention electricity, lightening, fire, flash, flame. He wrote in his late, great poem, That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and the comfort of the Resurrection: 'In a flash, at a trumpet crash, / I am all at once what Christ is, / since he was what I am and / This jack, joke, poor potsherd, / patch matchwood, immortal diamond, / Is immortal diamond.

~ Margaret R. Ellsberg

Plato utterly condemns the poets for publishing trivial, false and indeed wicked stories about the gods, such as that they fight with each other, or are overcome by emotions like grief, anger, mirth. Reluctantly, he will not allow Homer in his Republic, and he is very angry with the tragic poets for spreading unworthy ideas of the Deity.It may well be that there were inferior tragic poets who deserved Plato's strictures, but so far as concerns the tragic poets whom we know, Plato's attack is absurd. It is the attack of a severely intellectual philosopher who was also more of a poet than most poets have contrived to be; one who invented some of the profoundest and most beautiful of Greek myths. 'There is a long-standing quarrel', says Plato, 'between philosophy and poetry.' So there was, on the part of the philosophers, and most of all in Plato's own soul.

~ H.d.f. Kitto

The gates of hell are open night and day;Smooth the descent, and easy is the way:But to return, and view the cheerful skies,In this the task and mighty labor lies.

~ Virgil

AloneFrom childhood’s hour I have not been As others were—I have not seen As others saw—I could not bring My passions from a common spring— From the same source I have not taken My sorrow—I could not awaken My heart to joy at the same tone— And all I lov’d—I lov’d alone— Then—in my childhood—in the dawn Of a most stormy life—was drawn From ev’ry depth of good and ill The mystery which binds me still— From the torrent, or the fountain— From the red cliff of the mountain— From the sun that ’round me roll’d In its autumn tint of gold— From the lightning in the sky As it pass’d me flying by— From the thunder, and the storm— And the cloud that took the form (When the rest of Heaven was blue) Of a demon in my view—

~ Edger Allen Poe

Your poetry is lonely. And yet, you write to feel less alone

~ Pleasefindthis

I wouldn't coax the plant if I were you.Such watchful nursing may do it harm.Let the soil rest from so much diggingAnd wait until it's dry before you water it.The leaf's inclined to find its own direction;Give it a chance to seek the sunlight for itself.Much growth is stunted by too careful prodding,Too eager tenderness.The things we love we have to learn to leave alone.

~ Naomi Long Madgett

From childhood's hour I have not been As others were; I was differentI was not raised; as others wereMy passions from a common sense of ideas. From the same source I have taken Thus, this is art that connects mankind My pains; I could not awaken Resurrected, because in art there's creativity My heart too complacent at the same rate; And all I loved indeed, I loved alone.I am alone.

~ Henry Johnson Jr

In hours of bliss we oft have met:They could not always last;And though the present I regret,I'm grateful for the past.

~ William Congreve

I get a little poetic sometimes. The moonlight does that to me.

~ Julie Kagawa

I am so brave with love and yet, so weak.

~ N.r.hart

A coward is a servant of his fears.A hero enslaves his fears.

~ Lera Auerbach

Some have won a wild delight,By daring wilder sorrow;Could I gain thy love to-night,I'd hazard death to-morrow.

~ Charlotte Brontë

Many Americans first fell in love with the poetry of the thirteenth century teacher and spiritual leader Jelalludin Rumi during the early 1990s when the unparalleled lyrical grace, philosophical brilliance, and spiritual daring of his work took modern Western readers completely by surprise. The impact of its soulful beauty and the depth of its profound humanity were so intense that they reportedly prompted numerous individuals to spontaneously compose poetry.

~ Aberjhani