Poetry Quotes

Failure: the renewable resource.

~ Kay Ryan

Tears upon the dry sponge of heartdo not prove I am Promethean.

~ Adrian C. Louis

But for their cries,The herons would be lostAmidst the morning snow.

~ Chiyo Ni

On I’ll pass,dragging my huge love behind me.On whatfeverish night, deliria-ridden,by what Goliaths was I begot – I, so bigand by no one needed?

~ Vladimir Mayakovsky

we're lost where the mind can't find usutterly lost

~ Ikkyu

Poetry is prose in slow motion.

~ Nicholson Baker

I am inhabited by a cry. Nightly it flaps outLooking, with its hooks, for something to love.

~ Sylvia Plath

What makes us leave what we love best?What is it inside us that keeps erasing itselfWhen we need it most,That sends us into uncertainty for its own sakeAnd holds us flush there until we begin to love itAnd have to begin again?What is it within our own lives we decline to liveWhenever we find it, making our days unendurable,And nights almost visionless?I still don't know yet, but I do it.

~ Charles Wright

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?

~ Robert Frost

If my like for you was a football crowd, you’d be deaf ’cause of the roar. And if my like for you was a boxer, there’d be a dead guy lying on the floor. And if my like for you was sugar, you’d lose your teeth before you were twenty. And if my like for you was money, let’s just say you’d be spending plenty.

~ Cath Crowley

To wake the soul by tender strokes of art,To raise the genius, and to mend the heart

~ Alexander Pope

Come windless invaderI am a carnival ofStars, a poem of blood.

~ Sonia Sanchez

The first time I saw her,Everything in my head went quiet.

~ Neil Hilborn

Soul receives from soul that knowledge, therefore not by book nor from tongue. If knowledge of mysteries come after emptiness of mind, that is illumination of heart.

~ Jalaluddin Rumi

All days are nights to see till I see thee, And nights bright days when dreams do show thee me.

~ William Shakespeare

I am solitary as grass. What is it I miss?Shall I ever find it, whatever it is?

~ Sylvia Plath

Kill what you can't savewhat you can't eat throw outwhat you can't throw out buryWhat you can't bury give awaywhat you can't give away you must carry with you,it is always heavier than you thought.

~ Margaret Atwood

Eros, again now, the loosener of limbs troubles me,Bittersweet, sly, uncontrollable creature….

~ Sappho

Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.

~ Kahlil Gibran

at first when the rain fell from the sky so wide and deepit smelled like sage, my favorite smellI went up on the plateau to watch it cometo see the gifts it always broughtbut this rain changed from blue to black and leftnothing.

~ Ally Condie

I went to the Garden of Love, And saw what I never had seen: A Chapel was built in the midst, Where I used to play on the green. And the gates of this Chapel were shut, And 'Thou shalt not' writ over the door; So I turn'd to the Garden of Love, That so many sweet flowers bore. And I saw it was filled with graves, And tomb-stones where flowers should be: And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds, And binding with briars, my joys & desires.

~ William Blake

You have to imaginea waiting that is not impatientbecause it is timeless.

~ R.s. Thomas

A pine tree standeth lonelyIn the North on an upland bare;It standeth whitely shroudedWith snow, and sleepeth there.It dreameth of a Palm treeWhich far in the East alone,In the mournful silence standethOn its ridge of burning stone.

~ Heinrich Heine

We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race.

~ Tom Schulman

Too many poets act like a middle-aged mother trying to get her kids to eat too much cooked meat, and potatoes with drippings (tears). I don't give a damn whether they eat or not. Forced feeding leads to excessive thinness (effete). Nobody should experience anything they don't need to, if they don't need poetry bully for them. I like the movies too. And after all, only Whitman and Crane and Williams, of the American poets, are better than the movies.

~ Frank O'hara

I am not a finished poem, and I am not the song you’ve turned me into. I am a detached human being, making my way in a world that is constantly trying to push me aside, and you who send me letters and emails and beautiful gifts wouldn’t even recognise me if you saw me walking down the street where I live tomorrowfor I am not a poem. I am tired and worn out and the eyes you would see would not be painted or inspiredbut empty and weary from drinking too much at all timesand I am not the life of your party who sings and has glorious words to speakfor I don’t speak muchat alland my voice is raspy and unsteady from unhealthy living and not much sleep and I only use it when I sing and I always sing too muchor not at alland never when people are around because they expect poems and symphonies and I am nota poembut an elegyat my bestbut unedited and uncut and not a lot of people want to work with me because there’s only so much you can do with an audio take, with the plug-ins and EQs and I was born distorted, disordered, and I’m pretty fine with that,but others are not.

~ Charlotte Eriksson

Amor é um fogo que arde sem se ver, é ferida que dói, e não se sente; é um contentamento descontente, é dor que desatina sem doer.É um não querer mais que bem querer; é um andar solitário entre a gente; é nunca contentar se de contente; é um cuidar que ganha em se perder.É querer estar preso por vontade; é servir a quem vence, o vencedor; é ter com quem nos mata, lealdade.Mas como causar pode seu favor nos corações humanos amizade, se tão contrário a si é o mesmo Amor?

~ Luís De Camões

I am a free soul, singing my heart out by myself no matter where I go and I call strangers my friends because I learn things and find ways to fit them into my own world. I hear what people say, rearrange it, take away and tear apart until it finds value in my reality and there I make it work. I find spaces in between the cracks and cuts where it feels empty and there I make it work.

~ Charlotte Eriksson

Why love what you will lose?There is nothing else to love.

~ Louise Glück

it was the kind of moonthat I would want to send back to my ancestorsand gift to my descendantsso they know that I too,have been bruised...by beauty.

~ Sanober Khan

Well, now,if little by little you stop loving meI shall stop loving you little by little.If suddenlyyou forget medo not look for me,for I shall already have forgotten you.

~ Pable Neruda

The ambitions are wake up, breathe, keep breathing.

~ Nicole Blackman

Mineral cactai,quicksilver lizards in the adobe walls,the bird that punctures space,thirst, tedium, clouds of dust, impalpable epiphanies of wind.The pines taught me to talk to myself.In that garden I learnedto send myself off.Later there were no gardens.

~ Octavio Paz

Will you walk into my parlour? said the Spider to the Fly

~ Mary Howitt

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.

~ Gertrude Stein

The Soul selects her own Society—Then—shuts the Door—To her divine Majority—Present no more—Unmoved—she notes the Chariots—pausing—At her low Gate—Unmoved—an Emperor be kneelingUpon her Mat—I've known her—from an ample nation—Choose One—Then—close the Valves of her attention—Like Stone—

~ Emily Dickinson

I am too full of lifeto be half-loved.

~ Ijeoma Umebinyuo

Into my heart an air that killsFrom yon far country blows:What are those blue remembered hills,What spires, what farms are those?That is the land of lost content,I see it shining plain,The happy highways where I wentAnd cannot come again.

~ A.e. Housman

You are her mother.Why did you not warn her,hold her like a rotting boatand tell her that men will not love herif she is covered in continents,if her teeth are small colonies,if her stomach is an islandif her thighs are borders?What man wants to lie downand watch the world burnin his bedroom?Your daughter ’s face is a small riot,her hands are a civil war,a refugee camp behind each ear,a body littered with ugly things.But God,doesn’t she wearthe world well?

~ Warsan Shire

All the black leathershe needsis the E-Z boy reclinerwhere her love is parkedwith one of his hands wrapped around a remote,the other, a bottle of beer.She's right. It's kinky.The way he doesn't look awayfrom the TV,as her head bobsin his laplike a fisherman's floaton a nature program,hecticwith the pacehis breath sets.His crotch swellsunder her mouth'sprowess. He's sucha sweethearthe waitsuntil thecommercialsto come.

~ Daphne Gottlieb