20th-century Poet Quotes

Pablo Neruda

Jack Kerouac

W. H. Auden

Joseph Brodsky

Allen Ginsberg

André Breton

Nadine Gordimer

Words want to find chimes with each other, things want to connect.

I ask permission to be like everybody else,like the rest of the world and what's more, like anybody else:I beg you, with all my heart,if we are talking about me, since we are talking about me,please resist blasting the trumpet during my visitand resign yourselves to my quiet absence.

My desk, most loyal friend
thank you. You've been with me on
every road I've taken.
My scar and my protection.

Marina Tsvetaeva

Try not to turn your life into a race, least of all an obstacle race.

José Bergamín

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is stoned to death.

The theme of Death is to Poetry what Mistaken Identity is to Drama.

The leafless orchard
Is alone day and night
With his pure and sad silence.

Mehdi Akhavan-Sales

A little common sense, goodwill, and a tiny dose of unselfishness could make this goodly earth into an earthly paradise.

Richard Aldington

One way of looking at poetic periods is to notice what contemporary interests and knowledge penetrate the best verse written at the time and what moods are permitted in treating of these matters.

So I cradle this average violin that knows
Only forgotten showtunes, but argues
The possibility of free declamation anchored
To a dull refrain....

All writers feel struck by the limitations of language.

Margaret Atwood

Painters have often taught writers how to see.

To be so closely caught up in the teeth of things that they kill you, no matter how infinitesimally kill you, is, truly, to be a poet: and to be a poet in fact it is additionally necessary that you should possess the tongues and instruments with which to record this series of infinitesimal deaths.

Life is a slow suicide, and it is happening to every intellectual.

Shiv Kumar Batalvi

I speak to you in one tongue/ but every moment that ever mattered to me/ occurred in another language.

she
had
then
could
cram
had
by
she
am

Charles Bernstein

Nature repeats herself, or almost does: repeat, repeat, repeat, revise, revise, revise.

Elizabeth Bishop

Good free verse is not at all easy to write, for there is no repetitive beat to lull the reader's critical faculty, much pattern and discipline is to be found in it, though the pattern of sounds and choice of exact words, gives it its beauty.

Marjorie Boulton

I fear freedom. I, above all, fear the freedom that is above all feardom.

Giannina Braschi

Apollinaire asserted that Chirico's first paintings were done under the influence of kinesthetic disorders (migraines, colic, etc.)

If a poet has any obligation toward society, it is to write well. Being in the minority, he has no other choice. Failing this duty, he sinks into oblivion. Society, on the other hand, has no obligation toward the poet.

I think it must be lonely to be God.
Nobody loves a master. No.

Gwendolyn Brooks

Name and date split in soft slate a few months obliterate. 166

Or like a poet woo the Moon,
Riding an armchair for my steed,
And with a flashing pen harpoon
Terrific metaphors of speed.

Life pulls softly inside your bindings. The pod glows - dear stench.