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.

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

James Broughton

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.

In my movie there are no
horses, no heroes
only draftees fleeing
into the pines, some few
who survive, gravely
wounded, lying
burrowed beneath the dead—
silent until the enemy
bayonets what is believed
to be the last of the breathing.

Kevin Young (poet)

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

Gamaliel Bradford (biographer)

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

William Ross Wallace

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

Claudia Rankine

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

The worst part of losing good fish is that you cannot release them. They tailwalk across the back of your mind for days.

Christopher Camuto

Chemistry having its equations beyond our range of inequation.

Robert Duncan (poet)

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

Sometimes I come here just to be a lost mariner
but I am never lost:
there are the snowflakes frozen to the porthole of a jewelry store,
here is the treasure chest open to a single pearl
laid on a velvet slab,
there is the plashing of faces in the aisles
and the row of lockers stuffed with the coats and hats of the drowned
and it is night, and the moon rows over
the gentle waters of the parking lot.

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.

She sees herself with her long hair floating,
floating in the atmosphere of stardust.
She rides her planet the way a child rides a toy.
Her company is the boy who takes the sun on its daily journey,
and the man in the moon smiles as she passes by.

From the landscape: a sense of scale. From the dead: a sense of scale.

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