All Quotes By Tag: Poetry

“Hak cihâna tolıdur kimseler Hakk’ı bilmez / Anı sen senden iste o senden ayru olmaz.”

“The heart under your heart is not the one you shareso readily so full of pleasantry & tendernessit is a single blackberry at the heart of a brambleor else some larger fruit heavy the size of a fist”

“Only in Russia poetry is respected–it gets people killed.”

“The world is holy! The soul is holy! The skin is holy!The nose is holy! The tongue and cock and handand asshole holy!Everything is holy! everybody’s holy! everywhere isholy! everyday is in eternity! Everyman’s anangel!”

“Two such as you with such a master speedCannot be parted nor be swept awayFrom one another once you are agreedThat life is only life forevermoreTogether wing to wing and oar to oar”

“Come, drunks and drug-takers; come perverts unnerved!Receive the laurel, given, though late, on merit; to whom and wherever deserved.Parochial punks, trimmers, nice people, joiners true-blue,Get the hell out of the way of the laurel. It is deathless And it isn’t for you.”

“Jen’s Mum Will WriteJen’s mum writes advertising copy.She specializes in white goods:washing machines, dryers, fridges,freezers, dishwashers.She hates these applianceshulkingin corners,power-hungry and fractious.One day, she will have a wood stove,and she’ll write about things that matter-she will write about birth and death,about love and the absence of love,about fathers and children,about mothers and daughters,about lovers and friends.She’ll write about the whole goddamnwonderful, awful businessof loving and being loved”

“Must be going crazy—my favorite poet latelyhas been me!”

“May, and after a rainy springWe walk streets gallant with rhododendrons.”

“In my more rebellious days I tried to doubt the existence of the sacred, but the universe kept dancing and life kept writing poetry across my life. (Beyond Religion, p. 81)”

“…always-the sharp,plaintive edgeon the rimof the spoonof my giving.(lines 8-13 of the poem ‘Confessions’)”

“The worm doth woo the mortal, death claims a living bride, Night unto day is married, morn unto eventide, Earth a merry damsel, and heaven a knight so true,And Earth is quite coquettish, and beseemeth in vain to sue.”

“from “Semele Recycled”But then your great voice rang out under the skiesmy name!– and all those private namesfor the parts and places that had loved you best.And they stirred in their nest of hay and dung.The distraught old ladies chasing their lost altar,and the seers pursuing my skull, their lost employment,and the tumbling boys, who wanted the magic marbles,and the runaway groom, and the fisherman’s thirteen children,set up such a clamor, with their cries of “Miracle!”that our two bodies met like a thunderclapin midday– right at the corner of that wretched fieldwith its broken fenceposts and startled, skinny cattle.We fell in a heap on the compost heapand all our loving parts made love at once,while the bystanders cheered and prayed and hid their eyesand then went decently about their business.And here is is, moonlight again; we’ve bathed in the riverand are sweet and wholesome once more.We kneel side by side in the sand;we worship each other in whispers.But the inner parts remember fermenting hay,the comfortable odor of dung, the animal incense,and passion, its bloody labor,its birth and rebirth and decay.”

“The birth of a true poet is neither an insignificant event nor an easy delivery. Complications generally begin long before the fated soul carries its dubious light into whatever womb has been kind enough to volunteer the intricate machinery of its blood and prayers and muscles for a gestation period much longer than nine months or even nine years.”

“…It’s not that the worm forgives the plough; it gives it no mind. (Pain occurs, in passing.) (lines 37-39 in the poem ‘Fantasia on a Theme from IKEA’)”