Poet Quotes

To pay for my father's funeral I borrowed money from people he already owed money to. One called him a nobody. No, I said, he was a failure. You can't remember a nobody's name, that's why they're called nobodies. Failures are unforgettable.

If there is any truth to my parenting the dreamwork movement, it comes from the power of the press.

Far as distress the soul can wound
'Tis pain in each degree;
Bliss goes but to a certain bound,
Beyond is agony.

Frances Greville

See the wasp. He has pretty yellow stripes around his body, and a darning needle in his tail. If you will pat the wasp upon the tail we will give you a nice picture book.

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)

Solace of the night sky,
the hardly moving
face of the clock.

But he lay like a warrior taking his rest,
With his martial cloak around him.

When you're eleven you think every idea is born with you, that no one ever tried it the right way before. Your example, your own honesty, will make you a hero to everyone who knows you - and better, it will make people come to their senses and stop telling vicious lies about each other.

Elana Dykewomon

The last cobwebs
of fog in the
black firtrees are flakes
of white ash in the world's hearth.

Denise Levertov

To a nice ear, the quality of a voice is singularly affecting. Its depth seems to be allied to feeling; at least, the contralto notes alone give an adequate sense of pathos. They are born near the heart.

Henry Theodore Tuckerman

Poetry is the vision in a man's soul which he translates as best he can with all the means at his disposal.

Mother says there are locked rooms inside all women, kitchen of love, bedroom of grief, bathroom of apathy. Sometimes, the men, they come with keys, and sometimes the men, they come with hammers.

Some man of ages past
Observed their goings; and devised their titles,
Forming the constellations. For the name
Of each star singly none could tell or learn; —
So numerous are they everywhere, and many
Of the same size and color, as they roll.
Thus he bethought him to combine them so,
That, ranged in neighborhood, they might present
Images, — each taking his proper name,
And henceforth none rising to doubt or guess at.

I bargained with Life for a penny, and Life would pay no more. However I begged at the evening when I counted my scanty store. For Life is a just employer, he gives you what you ask. But once you have set the wages, why, you must bear the task. I worked for a menial's hire, only to learn, dismayed, that any wage I had asked of Life, Life would have willingly paid.

Jessie Belle Rittenhouse

Like as the armed knight
Appointed to the field,
With this world will I fight,
And faith shall be my shield…
I am not she that list
My anchor to let fall,
For every drizzling mist
My ship substantial.

I do not write for the public. You are my public and I hope to convert you.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

I know I could enchain him with a smile:
And lead him captive with a gentle word,
I scorn my look should ever man beguile,
Or other speech, than meaning to afford.

Elizabeth Tanfield Cary

How many have died without having given even one kiss to their chimera!

Théophile Gautier

What does it matter how cultivated and up-to-date we are, or how many thousands of books we've read? What matters is how we feel, how we see, what we do after reading; whether the street and the clouds and the existence of others mean anything to us; whether reading makes us, physically, more alive.

My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel wounding thorns;
Love is the fire and sighs the smoke, the ashes shame and scorns;
The fuel Justice layeth on, and Mercy blows the coals;
The metal in this furnace wrought are men's defiled souls.

Robert Southwell

'Qui procul hinc', the legend's writ,—
The frontier-grave is far away—
'Qui ante diem periit:
Sed miles, sed pro patria.'

Even
After
All this time
The Sun never says to the Earth, "You owe me." Look
What happens
With a love like that,
It lights the whole sky.

Daniel Ladinsky

Clear and simple in white and gold, Meadows blossom, of sunlit spaces, - The field is full as it well can hold And white with the drift of the ox-eye daisies!

Dora Read Goodale

Don't bring the ocean if I feel thirsty, nor heaven if I ask for a light; but bring a hint, some dew, a particle, as birds carry only drops away from water, and the wind a grain of salt.

In loss itself I find assuagement: having lost the treasure, I've nothing to fear.

Juana Inés de la Cruz