American Poet Quotes

Emily Dickinson

Robert Frost

Jack Kerouac

Walt Whitman

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

W. H. Auden

Joseph Brodsky

I tasted - careless - then -
I did not know the Wine
Came once a World - Did you?
Oh, had you told me so -
This Thirst would blister - easier - now

Emily Dickinson

Summary riposte
To the dreary wail
There's no knowing what
Love is all about.
Poets know a lot.

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

Though Duty's face is stern, her path is best: They sweetly sleep who die upon her breast.

" Tis plain to me
As A B C,
My dear friend, Mr. Neff!"
"Oh, yes! but then,"
Says Mr. N,
"You know I'm D E F!"

Charles Follen Adams

Sleep on your writing; take a walk over it; scrutinize it of a morning; review it of an afternoon; digest it after a meal; let it sleep in your drawer a twelvemonth; never venture a whisper about it to your friend, if he be an author especially.

Amos Bronson Alcott

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

Painters have often taught writers how to see.

All quiet along the Potomac, they say,
Except now and then a stray picket
Is shot as he walks on his beat to and fro,
By a rifleman hid in the thicket.
'Tis nothing—a private or two now and then
Will not count in the news of the battle;
Not an officer lost—only one of the men,
Moaning out, all alone, the death-rattle.

The music was by James Hewitt

Ethel Lynn Beers

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

Tell me thou all pervading mind,
When I this life forsake,
Must ev'ry tender tie unbind,
Each sweet connection break?

Ann Eliza Bleecker

When I behold the heavens as in their prime,
And then the earth (though old) still clad in green,
The stones and trees, insensible of time,
Nor age nor wrinkle on their front are seen

Anne Bradstreet

That which we look on with unselfish love
And true humility is surely ours,
Even as a lake looks at the stars above
And makes within itself a heaven of stars.

Mary Gardiner Brainard

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

Giannina Braschi

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

Thanksgiving-day, I fear, If one the solemn truth must touch, Is celebrated, not so much To thank the Lord for blessing o'er, As for the sake of getting more!

How oft the word which we would gladly speak
Might be, unto some darkly groping soul,
The key to bid doubt's massive doors unroll,
The free winds' breath upon the prisoner's cheek,
Or. to the hungry heart, sweet pity's dole!
We hurry on, nor know that they are near,
As passed Evangeline the one so dear.

Julia Abigail Fletcher Carney

The fisher droppeth his net in the stream, And a hundred streams are the same as one; And the maiden dreameth her love-lit dream; And what is it all, when all is done? The net of the fisher the burden breaks, And always the dreaming the dreamer wakes.

Only yield when you must, never "give up the ship," but fight on to the last "with a stiff upper lip!

When Death hath poured oblivion through my veins,
And brought me home, as all are brought, to lie
In that vast house, common to serfs and Thanes,
I shall not die, I shall not utterly die,
For beauty born of beauty-- that remains.

I laugh, for hope hath happy place with me;
If my bark sinks, 't is to another sea.

William Ellery Channing (poet)

Each thing lives according to its kind; the heart by love, the intellect by truth, the higher nature of man by intimate communion with God.

Edwin Hubbell Chapin