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.

John Pierpont
John Pierpont
My best performances were when I was 30 years old, and I was a vegan.

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

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.

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

Delmore Schwartz
Delmore Schwartz
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?

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

In the morning I get out of bed, I brush my teeth, I wash my face, I get dressed in the clothes I like best. I want to be good to myself.

It goes without saying that a fine short poem can have the resonance and depth of an entire novel.

James Wright
James Wright
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.

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.

Oh, a wondrous bird is the pelican!
His beak holds more than his belican.
He takes in his beak
Enough food for a week.
But I'll be darned if I know how the helican.

No pent-up Utica contracts your powers,
But the whole boundless continent is yours.

We, poet and magic myth-making Giant of Song, wander on. Holy the bones of our ancestors wrapped in Pyramids resting 'til the end of Time Holy the Magi, priests and Myth-scientists of Africa for sending him to us.

And the sun had on a crown
Wrought of gilded thistledown,
And a scarf of velvet vapor
And a raveled rainbow gown;
And his tinsel-tangled hair
Tossed and lost upon the air
Was glossier and flossier
Than any anywhere.

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

Zitkala-Sa
Zitkala-Sa
To guide someone
through the halls of hell
is not the same as love.

My son called to me that God was inside his red fire engine. He wanted to show me. I did move as fast as I could, spilling like water through the kitchen door into a summer day, but God had left by the time I got there. My son smiled, told me I'd missed him by seconds.

Don't compare yourself to anyone. Be happy to be the wonder unique, very special person that you are.

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

Billy Collins
Billy Collins
As for the common men apart, Who sweat to keep their common breath, And have no hour for books or art-- What dreams have these to hide from death!

Lola Ridge
Lola Ridge
A poem is a box, a thing, to put other things in. For safe keeping.

Since I have felt the sense of death,
Since I have borne its dread, its fear — Oh, how my life has grown more dear
Since I have felt the sense of death!
Sorrows are good, and cares are small,
Since I have known the loss of all.

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

James Broughton
James Broughton
Right here in our bodies, in our defense of our right to experience joy, in the refusal to abandon the place where we have been most completely invaded & colonized, in our determination to make the bombed & defoliated lands flower again and bear fruit, here where we have been most shamed is one of the most radical & sacred places from which to transform the world.