Poets Quotes - Page 4

A poet's work . . . to name the unnamable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world and stop it from going to sleep.

Poets are shameless with their experiences: they exploit them.

I act as the tongue of you,
... tied in your mouth . . . . in mine it begins to be loosened.

I grew up in this town, my poetry was born between the hill and the river, it took its voice from the rain, and like the timber, it steeped itself in the forests.

Poetry makes nothing happen.

Once, poets were magicians. Poets were strong, stronger than warriors or kings - stronger than old hapless gods. And they will be strong once again.

I'd spent way more years worrying about how to look like a poet - buying black clothes, smearing on scarlet lipstick, languidly draping myself over thrift-store furniture - than I had learning how to assemble words in some discernible order.

When there's a moon the shadows in the house grow larger;
invisible hands draw back the curtains,
a pallid finger writes forgotten words on dust
of the piano...

Again I resume the long
lesson: how small a thing
can be pleasing, how little
in this hard world it takes
to satisfy the mind
and bring it to its rest.

At the edge of madness you howl diamonds and pearls.

Freud thought that a psychosis was a waking dream, and that poets were daydreamers too, but I wonder if the reverse is not as often true, and that madness is a fiction lived in like a rented house

A pear should come to the table popped with juice,
Ripened in warmth and served in warmth. On terms
Like these, autumn beguiles the fatalist.

The pure playfulness of certain wholly whimsical portions of (Charles) Cros’s work should not obscure the fact that at the center of some of his most beautiful poems a revolver is leveled straight at us.

We must listen to poets.

One could say that artists are people who think naturally in highly patterned ways.

Therefore, since the world has still
Much good, but much less good than ill,
And while the sun and moon endure
Luck's a chance, but trouble's sure,
I'd face it as a wise man would,
And train for ill and not for good.

Criticism is like politics: if you don't make your own you are by default accepting the status quo and are finally yourself responsible for whatever the status quo does to you.

A poem is a meteor.

no poet can know what his poem is going to be like until he has written it.

August is dust here. Drought
stuns the road,
but juice gathers in the berries.