All Quotes By Tag: Poetry

“a woman will tell youevery home she has ever inhabitedhas been broken intostarting with her body”

“That night we made love “the real way” which we had not yet attemptedalthough married six months.Big mystery. No one knew where to put their leg and to this day I’m not surewe got it right.He seemed happy. You’re like Venice he said beautifully.Early next dayI wrote a short talk (“On Defloration”) which he stole and had publishedin a small quarterly magazine.Overall this was a characteristic interaction between us.Or should I say ideal.Neither of us had ever seen Venice.”

“I notice you have the assault proof vest -So it’s my fault I guess.So apparently I didn’t say ‘no’ as loud as my clothes could say ‘yes.’You see I didn’t know that my ‘no’ wasn’t enough -I didn’t understand that my body became less precious because certain dresses make me look hot.And I guess if I’m wearing the wrong topthen my ‘yes’ is the same as ‘stop.’And you shouldn’t have to, just because I begged you to.I’m begging you -Tell me the magic outfit and I’ll buy it.Apparently my ‘no’ wasn’t heard,even when I screamed.So I need my clothes to be quiet.”

“আগুন পোড়ালে তবু কিছু রাখেকিছু থাকে,হোক না তা ধূসর শ্যামল রঙ ছাই,মানুষে পোড়ালে আর কিছুই রাখে নাকিচ্ছু থাকে না,খাঁ খাঁ বিরান..”

“What’s madness but nobility of soulAt odds with circumstance? The day’s on fire!I know the purity of pure despair,My shadow pinned against a sweating wall,That place among the rocks–is it a cave,Or winding path? The edge is what I have…………… Dark,dark my light, and darker my desire.My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,Keeps buzzing at the sill.~From “The Waking” by Theodore Roethke”

“Sully suffers from a stutter,simple syllables will clutter,stalling speeches up on beacheslike a sunken sailboat rudder.Sully strains to say his phrases,sickened by the sounds he raises,strings of thoughts come out in knots,he solves his sentences like mazes.At night, he writes his thoughts insteadand sighs as they steadily rush from his head.”

“If Galileo had said in verse that the world moved, the inquisition might have let him alone.”

“Ξέρω: κηρύγματα καὶ ρητορεῖες πάλι, θὰ πεῖς.Ἔ ναὶ λοιπόν! Κηρύγματα καὶ ρητορεῖες.Σὰν πρόκες πρέπει νὰ καρφώνονται οἱ λέξειςΝὰ μὴν τὶς παίρνει ὁ ἄνεμος.”

“Don’t write with a pen. Ink tends to give the impression the words shouldn’t be changed.Write with what gives you the most sensual satisfaction.Write in a hard-covered notebook with green lined pages. Green is easy on the eyes. Blank white pages seems to challenge you to create the world before you start writing. It may be true that you, the modern poet, must make the world as you go, but why be reminded of it before you even have one word on the page?Don’t erase. Cross out rapidly and violently, never with slow consideration if you can help it.Start, as some smarty once said, in the middle of things.Play with syntax.Never want to say anything so strongly that you have to give up the option of finding something better – if you have to say it, you will.Read your poem aloud many times. If you don’t enjoy it every time, something may be wrong.If you ask a question, don’t answer it, or answer a question not asked, or defer. (If you can answer the question, to ask it is to waste time).Maximum sentence length: seventeen words.Minimum: One.Don’t be afraid to take emotional possession of words. If you don’t love a few words enough to own them, you will have to be very clever to write a good poem.”

“Love is the only bow on Life’s dark cloud. It is the morning and the evening star. It shines upon the babe, and sheds its radiance on the quiet tomb. It is the mother of art, inspirer of poet, patriot and philosopher.It is the air and light of every heart – builder of every home, kindler of every fire on every hearth. It was the first to dream of immortality. It fills the world with melody – for music is the voice of love.Love is the magician, the enchanter, that changes worthless things to Joy, and makes royal kings and queens of common clay. It is the perfume of that wondrous flower, the heart, and without that sacred passion, that divine swoon, we are less than beasts; but with it, earth is heaven, and we are gods.”

“There’s in my mind a…turbulent moon-ridden girlor old woman, or both,dressed in opals and rags, feathersand torn taffeta,who knows strange songsbut she is not kind.”

“¡Los suspiros son aire y van al aire!¡Las lágrimas son agua y van al mar!Dime, mujer, cuando el amor se olvida¿sabes tú adónde va?”

“Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one’s soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself, but with its subject.”

“The House Was Quiet and the World Was CalmThe house was quiet and the world was calm. The reader became the book; and summer night Was like the conscious being of the book. The house was quiet and the world was calm. The words were spoken as if there was no book, Except that the reader leaned above the page, Wanted to lean, wanted much to be The scholar to whom his book is true, to whom The summer night is like a perfection of thought. The house was quiet because it had to be. The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind: The access of perfection to the page. And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world, In which there is no other meaning, itself Is calm, itself is summer and night, itself Is the reader leaning late and reading there.”

“Her close friends have gathered.Lord, ain’t it a shameGrieving togetherSharing the blame.But when she was dyingLord, we let her down.There’s no use cryin’It can’t help her now.The party’s all overDrink up and go home.It’s too late to love herAnd leave her alone.Just say she was someoneLord, so far from homeWhose life was so lonesomeShe died all aloneWho dreamed pretty dreamsThat never came trueLord, why was she bornSo black and blue?Oh, why was she bornSo black and blue?Epitaph (Black And Blue) Written by: Kris KristoffersonNote: “Epitaph” is about Janis Joplin.”