American Poet Quotes

A weapon that comes down as still
As snowflakes fall upon the sod;
But executes a freeman's will,
As lightning does the will of God;
And from its force nor doors nor locks
Can shield you,—'t is the ballot-box.

All the things we hide in water
Hoping we won't see them go.
Forests growing under water
Press against the ones we know.

I know the difference between
what it is and what it isn't.
Just because I can't touch it
doesn't mean it isn't real.
All I have to do is smash the screen,
reach in and take what I want.
Break out of prison.
South Central homey's newly risen
from the night of living dead,
but this time he lives,
he gets to give the zombies
a taste of their own medicine.

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

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.

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

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

Strickland Gillilan

A sound like a sound of thunder rolled,
And the heart of a nation stirred

William Ross Wallace

My grandfather was the great solace. He didn't have a lot of formal education, but he had a feeling for words and a sense of the past, a sense of being involved in something larger than his own immediate concerns.

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

Mattie Stepanek

Is it not clear that a reviewer's psyche, like an iceberg, is seven-eighths beneath the surface?

Delmore Schwartz

Sometimes very strong feelings don't get written up because the interesting metaphor or dramatic situation doesn't suggest itself. So much of one's life goes unused.

I choose to politely ask myself to step aside if I am in my own way. If I do not get out of my way, I choose to call a friend who will have me removed.

Buddy Wakefield

Someone Should Write Me a Love Poem but I'm Stuck Doing It Myself

Daphne Gottlieb

The mere collection of facts, without some basis of theory for guidance and elucidation, is foolish and profitless.

Gamaliel Bradford (biographer)

If history is a record of survivors, Poetry shelters other voices.

Those four black girls blown up
in that Alabama church
remind me of five hundred
middle passage blacks,
in a net, under water
in Charleston harbor
so redcoats wouldn't find them.
Can't find what you can't see
can you?

Michael S. Harper

Uniformity, in its motives, its goals, its far-ranging consequences, is the natural enemy of poetry, not to mention the enemy of trees, the soil, the exemplary life therein.

Carolyn D. Wright

A man's motive in the small actions of daily life, like resting a moment on his pitchfork in the sun and listening intently, may be the most important thing about that man.

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

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

Chemistry having its equations beyond our range of inequation.

Robert Duncan (poet)

The candid camera is the greatest liar in the photographic family.... It is anarchic, naïve, and superficial.

Lincoln Kirstein

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