Poetry Quotes - Page 11

O, let my books be then the eloquence
And dumb presagers of my speaking breast;
Who plead for love, and look for recompense,
More than that tongue that more hath more express'd.
O, learn to read what silent love hath writ:
To hear with eyes belongs to love's fine wit.

Another one of your quippy japes?

There is only as much space, only as much time,
Only as much desire, only as many words,
Only as many pages, only as much ink
To accept all of us at light-speed
Hurrying into the Promised Land
Of oblivion that is waiting for us sooner or later.

If you're frightened of the countless number of books in the library, you'll never write anything, until you close your eyes and hold the pen.

Reading haiku is as much an art as writing it. The reader needs to pause and listen to the silences, to feel the spaces between the words, and to journey into the depths of many multi-colored worlds.

I can hear the library humming in the night,
a choir of authors murmuring inside their books
along the unlit, alphabetical shelves,
Giovanni Pontano next to Pope, Dumas next to his son,
each one stitched into his own private coat,
together forming a low, gigantic chord of language.

Poetry is not for profit. Poetry is for Posterity.

A writer will divine a metaphor from a pattern on a dress, or a gesture, because sunsets have been done before.

And this is what being an artist means, being a poet? To sacrifice yourself for your art, sacrifice your heart for your art, because it’s only through something broken that something beautiful can grow.

She was the reason I started to write but her beauty is kept me writing.

To walk quietly until the miracle in everything speaks is poetry, whether we write it down or not.

I am in awe of flowers.
Not because of their colors,
but because even though they
have dirt in their roots,
they still grow.
They still bloom.

So I find words I never thought to speak

In streets I never thought I should revisit

When I left my body on a distant shore.

My heart's scripture tastes
foreign in the mouths of
cowards and on the tongues of
those who have never breathed in
the moon and breathed out the world.

The words were good words, Ulysses felt, maybe even great words, but the list was very incomplete. He was just getting started. The words needed to be arranged, fussed with, put in the order of his heart.

If you had told me, though, when I was twenty-four that I would write about Skokie, Illinois, where I grew up, I would have said, ‘You’re out of your mind. Why would I have Skokie in a poem?’ But you become resigned. Your job is to write about the life you actually have.

Superior poets say what they really feel. Mediocre poets say what they decide to feel. Inferior poets say what they think they should feel.

. . . I suppose one starts out, as a child, being romantic and dreaming of adventure. Poetic. Then reality comes along, and with it, a whole lot of prose.

Imagination makes the world
and all the wonders in it.
The seed of every dream unfurls
as you with love begin it!

Poetry is more than a form of art. It's a vibration and a pulsing heart. Whether it's sour or whether it's sweet. It can give you strength no one can defeat