Poetry Quotes

I am a work in progress.

~ Violet Yates

All shadows of clouds the sun cannot hide like the moon cannot stop oceanic tide;but a hidden star can still be smiling at night's black spell on darkness, beguiling

~ Munia Khan

sometimes when everything seems atits worstwhen all conspiresand gnawsand the hours, days, weeksyearsseem wasted – stretched there upon my bedin the darklooking upward at the ceilingi get what many will consider anobnoxious thought:it’s still nice to beBukowski.

~ Charles Bukowski

We real cool. We Left school. We Lurk late. We Strike straight. We Sing sin. We Thin gin. We Jazz June. We Die soon.

~ Gwendolyn Brooks

When no one is looking,I swallow deserts and cloudsand chew on mountainsknowing they are sweet bones!When no one is lookingand I want to kiss God,I just lift my own hand to my mouth.

~ The Rubaiyat Of Hafiz

If we surrenderedto earth’s intelligencewe could rise up rooted, like trees.Instead we entangle ourselvesin knots of our own makingand struggle, lonely and confused.So like children, we begin again...to fall,patiently to trust our heaviness.Even a bird has to do thatbefore he can fly.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

You know, there are good reasons to learn how to read. Poetry isn't one of them. I mean, so what if two roads go two ways in a wood? So what? Who cares if it made all that big a difference? What difference? And why should I have to guess what the difference is? Isn't that what he's supposed to say?Why can't poets just say what they want to say and then shut up?

~ Gary D. Schmidt

Errors, like straws, upon the surface flow; He who would search for pearls, must dive below.

~ John Dryden

This poetry. I never know what I'm going to say.I don't plan it.When I'm outside the saying of it,I get very quiet and rarely speak at all.

~ Jalaluddin Rumi

Thus, though we cannot make our sun Stand still, yet we will make him run.

~ Andrew Marvell

Doubt not, O poet, but persist. Say 'It is in me, and shall out.' Stand there, balked and dumb, stuttering and stammering, hissed and hooted, stand and strive, until at last rage draw out of thee that dream-power which every night shows thee is thine own; a power transcending all limit and privacy, and by virtue of which a man is the conductor of the whole river of electricity.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

First, I thought, almost despairing,This must crush my spirit now;Yet I bore it, and am bearing-Only do not ask me how.

~ Heinrich Heine

so much dependsupona red wheelbarrowglazed with rainwaterbeside the whitechickens.

~ William Carlos Williams

I think we are in rats’ alley, Where the dead men lost their bones.

~ T.s. Eliot

Your war drum ain't / louder than this breath.

~ Suheir Hammad

I wander through each chartered street,Near where the chartered Thames does flow;A mark in every face I meet,Marks of weakness, marks of woe.In every cry of every man,In every infant’s cry of fear,In every voice, in every ban,The mind-forged manacles I hear:How the chimney-sweeper’s cryEvery blackening church appals,And the hapless soldier’s sighRuns in blood down palace-walls.But most, through midnight streets I hearHow the youthful harlot’s curseBlasts the new-born infant’s tear,And blights with plagues the marriage-hearse.

~ William Blake

The first rose on my rose-tree Budded, bloomed, and shattered, During sad days when to me Nothing mattered. Grief of grief has drained me clean; Still it seems a pity No one saw,—it must have been Very pretty.

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

It's important to have your private enjoyments because sometimes that's all we have.

~ Kay Ryan

I am suggesting that the radical of poetry lies not in theresolution of doubts but in their proliferation

~ C.d. Wright

What Youth deemed crystal, Age finds out was dew

~ Robert Browning

Cut my life into pizzas. this is my plastic fork. oven baking, no breathing, dont give a fuck if its carbs that i'm eating' -Catherine Spann

~ Catherine Spann

I stalk certain words... I catch them in mid-flight, as they buzz past, I trap them, clean them, peel them, I set myself in front of the dish, they have a crystalline texture to me, vibrant, ivory, vegetable, oily, like fruit, like algae, like agates, like olives... I stir them, I shake them, I drink them, I gulp them down, I mash them, I garnish them... I leave them in my poem like stalactites, like slivers of polished wood, like coals, like pickings from a shipwreck, gifts from the waves... Everything exists in the word.

~ Pablo Neruda

i want to be in love with youthe same wayi am in love with the moonwith the lightshiningout of its soul.

~ Sanober Khan

Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.

~ Plato

sometimes i don't know, which momentwhich cool gust of wind will come,and enchant metousling my hairand my heart, stirring...that familiar ache of poetry, which drop will kissthe old wrench in my soulreminding me, all over againi miss you better in the rain.

~ Sanober Khan

What wretched poverty of language! To compare stars to diamonds!

~ Gustave Flaubert

I regret to say I'munable to reply to your unexpressed desires.

~ Harryette Mullen

How does the ordinary person come to the transcendent? For a start, I would say, study poetry. Learn how to read a poem. You need not have the experience to get the message, or at least some indication of the message. It may come gradually. (92)

~ Joseph Campbell

How to Write a PoemCatch the airaround the butterfly.

~ Katerina Stoykova Klemer

One fine day, in the middle of the night, two dead boys got up to fight. Back to back they faced each other. They pulled out their swords and shot one another. One deaf cop, on the beat heard the noise, and came and shot the two dead boys.

~ Holly Black

The rain set early in tonight,The sullen wind was soon awake,It tore the elm-tops down for spite,And did its best to vex the lake:I listened with heart fit to break.When glided in Porphyria; straightShe shut the cold out and the storm,And kneeled and made the cheerless grateBlaze up and all the cottage warm

~ ;Robert Browning

Will grinned. “Some of these books are dangerous,” he said. “It’s wise to be careful.”“One must always be careful of books,” said Tessa, “and what is inside them, for words have the power to change us.”“I’m not sure a book has ever changed me,” said Will. “Well, there is one volume that promises to teach one how to turn oneself into an entire flock of sheep—”“Only the very weak-minded refuse to be influenced by literature and poetry,” said Tessa

~ Cassandra Clare

ولأنني رغم القبور..ورغم موت الأرضأرفض أن أموت

~ فاروق جويدة

I sat, a solitary man,In a crowded London shop,An open book and empty cupOn the marble table-top.While on the shop and street I gazedMy body of a sudden blazed;And twenty minutes more or lessIt seemed, so great my happiness,That I was blessed and could bless.

~ W.b. Yeats

Flutter like a hummingbird, Dive like an eagle, Ain't no bird that's my equal. - Twilight

~ Kathryn Lasky

My words are the garment of what I shall never be Like the tucked sleeve of a one-armed boy.

~ W.s. Merwin

Free verse is like free love, it is a contradiction in terms.

~ G.k. Chesterton

One difference between poetry and lyrics is that lyrics sort of fade into the background. They fade on the page and live on the stage when set to music.

~ Stephen Sondheim

After great pain, a formal feeling comes – The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs – The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,And Yesterday, or Centuries before?The Feet, mechanical, go round – Of Ground, or Air, or Ought – A Wooden way Regardless grown, A Quartz contentment, like a stone – This is the Hour of Lead – Remembered, if outlived, As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow – First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go –

~ Emily Dickinson

O words are poor receipts for what time hath stole away

~ John Clare