American Poet Quotes

If you have enough breath to complain about anything, you have more than enough reason to give thanks about something.

Mattie Stepanek

the Revolution aint dead
its tired,
and jest resting.

Carolyn Rodgers

I believe if I should die,
And you should kiss my eyelids where I lie
Cold, dead, and dumb to all the world contains,
The folded orbs would open at thy breath,
And from its exile in the Isles of Death
Life would come gladly back along my veins.

Mary Ashley Townsend

You should speak out because if you don't, it's going to harm you.

Claudia Rankine

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, With conquering limbs astride from land to land; Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of exiles.

There are rituals not structures for being a poet, drinking too much, taking too many drugs, being a lady chaser, having your nervous breakdown, being irresponsible about money.

Only of one thing I am sure:
when I dream
I am always ageless.

Elizabeth Coatsworth

Ireland regards sex, when she regards it at all, with an entirely primitive and practical eye.

Girl, when he gives you kisses twain, use one, and let the other stay; And hoard it, for moons die, red fades, and you may need a kiss—some day.

Ridgely Torrence

I am called "Venus Hottentot."
I left Capetown with a promise
of revenue: half the profits
and my passage home: A boon!
Master's brother proposed the trip;
the magistrate granted me leave
I would return to my family
a duchess, with watered-silk
dresses and money to grow food.

Elizabeth Alexander (poet)

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.

In the under-wood and the over-wood there is murmur and trill this day, For every bird is in lyric mood, And the wind will have its way.

Clinton Scollard

Oh I'm in love with the janitor's boy,
And the janitor's boy loves me;
He's going to hunt for a desert isle
In our geography.

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

Giannina Braschi

Darlings of the forest! Blossoming alone When Earth's grief is sorest For her jewels gone - Ere the last snow-drift melts, your tender buds have blown.

Rose Terry Cooke

It is remarkable, in cats, that the outer life they reveal to their masters is one of perpetual boredom.

The splendor of Silence,—of snow-jeweled hills and of ice.

Ingram Crockett

Here's to the wind blowing against this lighted house and to the vast, windless spaces between the stars.

The past is not only that which happened but also that which could have happened but did not.

Let not my death be long,
But light
As a bird's swinging;
Happy decision in the height
Of song —
Then flight
From off the ultimate bough!
And let my wing be strong,
And my last note the first
Of another's singing.
See to it, Thou!

But when the conquered spirit breaks free And indicates a new light Who'll take care of the cats?

What if this young woman, who writes such bad poems, in competition with her husband, whose poems are equally bad, should stretch her remarkably long and well-made legs out before you, so that her skirt slips up to the tops of her stockings?

Gilbert Sorrentino

Just stand aside and watch yourself go by; Think of yourself as 'he' instead of 'I'.

Strickland Gillilan

There is no great; there is no small; in the mind that causeth all

I'm saying that the domain of poetry includes both oral & written forms, that poetry goes back to a pre-literate situation & would survive a post-literate situation, that human speech is a near-endless source of poetic forms, that there has always been more oral than written poetry, & that we can no longer pretend to a knowledge of poetry if we deny its oral dimension.

Jerome Rothenberg