Poets Quotes

A poem that is itself a name does not yearn for the name of its creator, but shines from its name alone.

~ Dejan Stojanovic

A rain like melting pillows…a rain so beautifulI could neverhave let go ofif not certainthat someday...it would find its wayinto my poem.

~ Sanober Khan

Shadow of Your SpiritAt night I see the shadow of your spiritMixing with my blood and soulDuring the day I see your photosThey tell me come to meCome to my world and romanceEven I don’t know by myselfHow I fell into your loveI cannot remove it from my heartYour love stabled my soul

~ Kamaran Ihsan Salih

Imperfection is my ticket, perfection is my pursuit

~ Paul Travis

The words of the true poems give you more than poems, they give you to form for yourself poems, religions, politics, war, peace, behavior, histories, essays, daily life, & everything else, they balance the ranks, colors, races, creeds, and the sexes, they do not seek beauty, they are sought, forever touching them or close upon them follows beauty, longing, fain, love-sick. They prepare for death, yet they are not the finish, but rather the outset, they bring none of his or her terminus or to be content & full, whom they take they take into space to behold the birth of the stars, to learn one of the meanings, to launch off with absolute faith, to sweep through the ceaseless rings & never be quiet again.

~ Walt Whitman

she wanted because art

~ Nicole Brossard

Don't ask me any questions. I've seen how things that seek their way find their void instead.

~ Federico García Lorca

A Blessing on the PoetsPatient earth-digger, impatient fire-maker,Hungry word-taker and roving sound-lover,Sharer and saver, muser and acher,You who are open to hide or uncover,Time-keeper and –hater, wake-sleeper, sleep-waker;May language’s language, the silence that liesUnder each word, move you over and over,Turning you, wondering, back to surprise.

~ Annie Finch

You are the ocean to my eyes.

~ Sanober Khan

You were the poem I never knew how to write because no words could describe the wind you cannot see, but feel.

~ Shannon L. Alder

I pen you words from my heartneither paper nor pen would doas I lay them out in flowery fontswhat more could you ask foras I am writing in your heartthe love that I want to endureI am no Keats nor am I anyone but mea poetess longing for your touchget lost with me in my wordsas I serenade you with a forever quill.

~ Chimnese Davids

But that so many scholars are barbarians does not much matter so long as a few of them are ready to help with their specialized knowledge the few independent thinkers, that is to say the poets, who try to to keep civilization alive.

~ Robert Graves

poets. have the toughest jobin the universe-of turning silenceinto eloquence.

~ Sanober Khan

There is a moon,that rests in the quiet cornersof a lover’s lips.

~ Sanober Khan

you make autumn misttaste like champagne and turn winter raininto the elixir of life itself.

~ Sanober Khan

funny how our heartswere designed to loveso fiercely.but break ever so gently.

~ Sanober Khan

My face responds without authorization from my brain, so the resulting smile feels like the biggest, most unguarded, goofiest smile I’ve ever unleashed in my entire life. I didn’t even know my face could do this. It’s like there were hidden zippers in my cheeks. Jesus. This must be what feelings are. This is why people write poems! I get it now. I get it, and I want more.

~ Laini Taylor

Inside is where we meet everyone else, it's on the outside that we are truly alone.

~ Charles Simic

All things want to float.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

I is for immortality, which for some poets is a necessary compensation. Presumably miserable in this life, they will be remembered when the rest of us are long forgotten. None of them asks about the quality of that remembrance--what it will be like to crouch in the dim hallways of somebody's mind until the moment of recollection occurs, or to be lifted off suddenly and forever into the pastures of obscurity. Most poets know better than to concern themselves with such things. They know the chances are better than good that their poems will die when they do and never be heard of again, that they'll be replaced by poems sporting a new look in a language more current. They also know that even if individual poems die, though in some cases slowly, poetry will continue: that its subjects, it constant themes, are less liable to change than fashions in language, and that this is where an alternate, less lustrous immortality might be. We all know that a poem can influence other poems, remain alive in them, just as previous poems are alive in it. Could we not say, therefore, that individual poems succeed most by encouraging revisions of themselves and inducing their own erasure? Yes, but is this immortality, or simply a purposeful way of being dead?

~ Mark Strand

She day-dreams just as I do. She is addicted to her solitude just as I am. She loves watching the rain-drops fall slowly on to the green leaves of an old guava tree just as I do. She loves drifting in time and time travel just as I do. She loves looking at the waves dashing against the rocks just as I do.

~ Avijeet Das

May the nights always be aglowwith the bliss of the daywith unharmed hands and feetand kissed cheeks.

~ Sanober Khan

Love me...with all the abandonof a sudden wild rain.

~ Sanober Khan

for all I can really do isstand herein September’s rainsavoring…soaking it all inslipping..and simplyholding on to poetryfor dear life.

~ Sanober Khan

love is always moving towards you

~ Sondra Faye

let me diefrom having being drunk onindigo skies, my liver...overflowing with stars.

~ Sanober Khan

I live there...where the birds are infiniteeverywherewhere they fleeit's a place your eyes can wanderbut never seeWhere everyone accepts me,Without any pretenseIt's a place your mind can picturebut never really comprehend.

~ Sanober Khan

someday i will walk under the soul-blossom tree with my hand eternally woven in yours.

~ Sanober Khan

when i write of you, my deari am holding youin the most exquisiteways.

~ Sanober Khan

A poem in the heart is worthmore than a million dollarsin the bank account.

~ Sanober Khan

You touched my heart...ever so softlyand I realizedtears had never been...merely saltand the rainOh the Rain!had never been merely water.

~ Sanober Khan

Stars ink your fingerswith a lexicon of flameblazing rare knowledge.

~ Aberjhani

If the poets offered us nothing more than another make-believe world, they would be mere sellers of drugs or, at best, sweetmeats.

~ Robert Lynd

Give me a life time by the fire, with a book in my hand, nothing more and I will tell you a great story.

~ Evelyn L. Colon

Come writers and criticsWho prophesize with your penAnd keep your eyes wideThe chance won't come againAnd don't speak too soonFor the wheel's still in spinAnd there's no tellin' whoThat it's namin'For the loser nowWill be later to winFor the times they are a-changin'.

~ Bob Dylan

Why do I write? Out of fear. Out of fear that the memory of the people I write about might go lost. Out of fear that the memory of myself might get lost. Or even just to be shielded by a story, to slip inside a story and stop being recognizable, controllable, subject to blackmail.

~ Fabrizio De André

Sometimes poets expect me to think far deeper than I'm willing to dig.

~ Richelle E. Goodrich

The most sublime labour of poetry is to give sense and passion to insensate things, and it is characteristic of children to take inanimate things in their hands and talk to them in play as if they were living persons... This philological-philosophical axiom proves to us that in the world's childhood men were by nature sublime poets...

~ Giambattista Vico

But give thanks, at least, that you still have Frost's poems; and when you feel the need of solitude, retreat to the companionship of moon, water, hills and trees. Retreat, he reminds us, should not be confused with escape. And take these poems along for good luck!

~ Robert Graves

They have the guns, we have the poets. Therefore, we will win.

~ Howard Zinn