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

ABOMUNISTS JOIN NOTHING BUT THEIR HANDS OR LEGS, OR OTHER SAME.

A book is kind because its pages let us know when it is coming to an end.

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

And for a minute, maybe longer... everything that threatens us, threatens to save us.

James Galvin (poet)

The writer who is a mother should, I think, record everything she can: make notes, keep journals, take photographs, use a tape recorder, and remind herself that there is a subject so incalculably vast significance to humanity, about which virtually nothing is known because writers have not been mothers.

Alicia Ostriker

I will look at the footprints going in and out of the water and dream up a small blue good to talk to.

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

Alas! Am I born for this,
To wear this slavish chain?
Deprived of all created bliss,
Through hardship, toil and pain!

George Moses Horton

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

Live blindly and upon the hour. The Lord,
Who was the Future, died full long ago.
Knowledge which is the Past is folly.

Trumbull Stickney

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.

Ultimately I have learned more about poetry, from music and magic than from literature.

James Broughton

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

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!

The closure of the book is an illusion largely created by its materiality, its cover. Once the book is considered on the plane of its significance, it threatens infinity.

Susan Stewart (poet)

We are striving to forge our union with purpose.
To compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters, and conditions of man.