All Quotes By Tag: Poetry

“the next time you hear someone in a workshop remarking on how good a particular free-verse line or passage sounds, scan it. The odds are that it will fall into a regular metrical pattern.”

“Ted: A fucking good poem is a weapon. It’s– and not like a–a popgun or something.- It’s a bomb.It’s like a bloody big bomb. Sylvia: That’s why they make childrenlearn them in school.They don’t want them messing aboutwith them on their own. I mean, just imagineif a sonnet went off accidentally. Boom.”

“. . . poetry, like all imaginative creations, divines the human enterprise. This is poetry’s social value.”

“You bend the nailBut keep hammering becauseHammering makes the world”

“The Plot Against The GiantFirst GirlWhen this yokel comes maundering,Whetting his hacker,I shall run before him,Diffusing the civilest odorsOut of geraniums and unsmelled flowers.It will check him.Second GirlI shall run before him,Arching cloths besprinkled with colorsAs small as fish-eggs.The threadsWill abash him.Third GirlOh, la…le pauvre!I shall run before him,With a curious puffing.He will bend his ear then.I shall whisperHeavenly labials in a world of gutturals.It will undo him.”

“L’artGreen arsenic smeared on an egg-white cloth, Crushed strawberries! Come, let us feast our eyes.”

“LIFE IS SUBVERSIVE”

“… You can’t be with God and be neutral. / True contemplation is resistance. And poetry, / gazing at clouds is resistance I found out in jail.”

“Raise from your bed of languorRaise from your bed of dismayYour friends will not come tomorrowAs they did not come todayYou must rely on yourself, they said,You must rely on yourself,Oh but I find this pill so bitter said the poor manAs he took it from the shelfCrying, O sweet Death come to meCome to me for company,Sweet Death it is only you I canConstrain for company.”

“NexusI wrote stubbornly into the evening.At the window, a giant praying mantisrubbed his monkey wrench head against the glass,begging vacantly with pale eyes;and the commas leapt at me like wormsor miniature scythes blackened with age.the praying mantis screeched louder,his ragged jaws opening into formlessness.I walked outside;the grass hissed at my heels.Up ahead in the lapping darknesshe wobbled, magnified and absurdly green,a brontosaurus, a poet.”

“noone knows and noone seeswe lovers doing what we pleasebut people stop and point at theseten milk bottles a-turning into cheese”

“I used the word ‘prose’ in the Trans-Siberian in the early Latin sense of prosa dictu. Poem seemed to me too pretentious, too narrow. Prose is more open, popular.”

“My name used to be in the papers dailyAs having dined somewhere,Or traveled somewhere,Or rented a house in Paris,Where I entertained the nobility.I was forever eating or traveling,Or taking the cure at Baden-Baden.Now I am here to do honorTo Spoon River, here beside the family whence I sprang.No one cares now where I dined,Or lived, or whom I entertained,Or how often I took the cure at Baden-Baden!”

“I’d love to give you somethingbut what would help?”

“I give you the end of a golden string,Only wind it into a ball,It will lead you in at Heaven’s gateBuilt in Jerusalem’s wall.”