Poetry Quotes

Poems are lenses, mirrors, and X-ray machines.

~ David Mitchell

Poetry was not meant to be a workhorse; it was not designed to paint pretty moral pictures of life; it was not brought into being to confuse us with cryptograms, or high platitudes, or pompous pretensions. The poet was meant to be a seer; he was designed to run toward the intensities and magnificences of life, to bathe his hands in reality. But where the mystic ran toward Reality in silence and lost himself in it, the poet as soon as he had experienced it, ran back toward humanity crying the good news and putting it into shimmering webs of words.

~ Francis Beauchesne Thornton

The burning off and the gathering together are one.

~ Billy Marshall Stoneking

Don't ask me what it means, ask me how it felt.

~ Jill Telford

The Ph.D is one of the chosen who know that some things can never be fathomed, no matter how hard you try. What good are explanations? There is no possibility of explaining how such a work [Mozart's Requiem, in the instance] could ever have come into being. (The same holds true for certain poems, which should not be analyzed either.)

~ Elfriede Jelinek

[poems are] crystals deposited after the effervescent contact of the spirit with reality.(cristaux deposes apres l'effervescent contact de l'esprit avec la realite)

~ Pierre Reverdy

Horse[Man you will find herea new representation of the universeat its most poetic and most modernMan man man man man manGive yourself up to this art where the sublimedoes not exclude charmand brilliancy does not blur the nuanceit is now or never the momentto be sensitive to poetry for it dominatesall dreadfullyGuillaume Apollinaire]

~ Guillaume Apollinaire

The rat isthe mous-tacheinthetrache.the wrong-doerinthesoer.

~ J. Patrick Lewis

The machines are too dull when weare lion-poems that move & breathe.

~ Michael Mcclure

You must make love to him like his touch is your salvation.

~ Charlotte Eriksson

Is the phrase 'pay' or 'play the piper'I inquire, why'Cause I admire a desire to flip the switchYeah make a way to face the music likeLife savings for a mosh pit riotListen to a mixRock the tickets, higher volumeVelocity which shakes a cockpit's pilot

~ Criss Jami

Old McDonald had a restaurant,E, I, E, I, O,And in that restaurant was some beef,E, I, E, I, O,With a moo moo here,And a moo moo there.Here a moo, there a moo,Everywhere a moo moo cholesterol filled death trap burger.

~ Harry Whitewolf

Adorn ritual; decorate shrines of love, hope, tranquility. Be significant. Arrive deliberate. . .

~ Cathleen Margaret

All mothers breed dead children.

~ Mie Hansson

Your job is to abide in my pastureEating sweet grass and drinking pure water,And sharing both with others—That is a lamb’s business.

~ Jessica Coupé

Friend who has fired the kingfishers and flamed the dragonflies – they catch your light however they move and beam it out of their eyes.

~ Bryana Johnson

Tranquil breeze Glittering beach Dancing water Bluest skyMy mind flies high with joyful laughter.

~ Debasish Mridha

Do not feel alone.You are connected to everyoneyesterday, today, and for days to come connected with a threadless garlandthat is love.

~ Debasish Mridha

To heal, love.To understand, feel.To let go, forgive.To care, be kind.

~ Debasish Mridha

Focus on beauty, not on feardance with stress to let it clear

~ Debasish Mridha

Dreams are the poetry of life to be written with love and actions.

~ Debasish Mridha

Today is such a lovely day, my heart is dancing with joy.My mind is flowing with timeand my soul is longing for your soul.

~ Debasish Mridha

Let your heart dance with pen and paperNow fill the paper with dancing letters.

~ Debasish Mridha

Poetry is the beauty of life.

~ Debasish Mridha

Poetry is the essence and evidence of life.

~ Debasish Mridha

No revolutionary movement is complete without its poetical expression.

~ James Connolly

...I would not engage the wombatIn any form of mortal combat.

~ Ogden Nash

Big Brown MooseI'm a big brown moose,I'm a rascally moose,I'm a moose with a tough, shaggy hide;and I kick and I prancein a long-legged dancewith my moose-mama close by my side.I shrug off the coldand I sneeze at the windand I swivel my ears in the snow;and I tramp and I trompover forest and swamp,'cause there's nowhere a moose cannot go.I'm a big brown moose, I'm a ravenous mooseas I hunt for the willow and yew;with a snort and a crunch,I rip off each bunch,and I chew and I chew and I chew.When together we slumpin a comfortable clump --my mountainous mama and I --I give her a nuzzleof velvety muzzle.Our frosty breath drifts to the sky.I'm a big brown moose,I'm a slumberous moose,I'm a moose with a warm, snuggly hide;and I bask in the moonas the coyotes croon,with my moose-mama close by my side.

~ Joyce Sidman

We are all just humans trying to survive in this crazy world, in the spaces between birth and death.

~ Melody Lee

The vastest things are those we may not learn.We are not taught to die, nor to be born,Nor how to burnWith love.How pitiful is our enforced returnTo those small things we are the masters of.

~ Mervyn Peake

Dividing earth and skyis not the right wayto think about this wholeness.It only allows one to liveat a more precise address--were I to be searched forI'd be found much faster.My distinguishing marksare rapture and despair.From 'Sky', in the collection 'Miracle Fair

~ Wisława Szymborska

Come down, O Christ, and help me! reach thy hand For I am drowning in a stormier sea Than Simon on thy lake of Galilee:The wine of life is spilt upon the sand,My heart is as some famine-murdered land Whence all good things have perished utterly, And well I know my soul in Hell must lieIf this night before God's throne should stand.

~ Oscar Wilde

And I am weary of the anguishIncreasing winters bear;Weary to watch the spirit languishThrough years of dead despair.So, if a tear, when thou art dying,Should haply fall from me,It is but that my soul is sighing,To go and rest with thee.

~ Emily Brontë

Poetry has its uses for despair. It can carve a shape in which a pain can seem to be; it can give one’s loss a form and dimension so that it might be loss and not simply a hopeless haunting. It can do these things for one person, or it can do them for an entire culture. But poetry is for psychological, spiritual, or emotional pain. For physical pain it is, like everything but drugs, useless.

~ Christian Wiman

Between the desireAnd the spasm,Between the potencyAnd the existence,Between the essenceAnd the descent,Falls the Shadow.

~ T.s. Eliot

a storm that walked on legs of lightning,dragging its shaggy belly over the fields.

~ Ted Kooser

We aim to bemen who’ll makeour mothers proud,but we end upmaking them cry,and are onlyslightly betterthan our fathers,at best

~ Phil Volatile

My mama steps out of her dressand drops it, an inheritance falling to my feet.She stands alone: bathed, blooming,burdened with nothing of this world.Her body is naked and beautiful,her wings gray and scorched,her brown eyes piercing the brown of mine.I watch her departure, her flapping wings:She doesn’t look back, not even once,not even to whisper my name

~ Brenda Sutton Rose

With red clay between my toes,and the sun setting over my head,the ghost of my mother blows in,riding on a honeysuckle breeze, oh lord,riding on a honeysuckle breeze.

~ Brenda Sutton Rose

Final DispositionOthers divided closets full of mother's things.From the earth, I took her poppies.I wanted those fandango foldsof red and black chiffon she doted on,loving the wild and Moorish music of them,coating her tongue with the thin skinof their crimson petals.Snapping her fingers, flamenco dancer,she'd mock the clack of castanetsin answer to their gypsy cadence.She would crouch toward the flounce of flowers,twirl, stamp her foot, then kick it outas if to lift the ruffles, scarletalong the hemline of her yard.And so, I dug up, soil and all,the thistle-toothed and gray-green clumpsof leaves, the testicle seedpods and hairy stemsboth out of season, to transplant them in my less-exotic garden. There, they bloomher blood's abandon, year after year,roots holding, their poppy heads noddinga carefree, opium-ecstatic, possibly forever sleep.

~ Jane Glazer