All Quotes By Tag: Poetry

“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’)”

“Nostalgia locates desire in the past where it suffers no active conflict and can be yearned toward pleasantly.”

“Little deer, I’ve stuffed all the world’s diseases inside you. / Your veins are thorns // and the good cells are lost in the deep dark woods / of your organs.”

“with shrunken fingerswe ate our oranges and bread,shivering in the parked car;though we know we had neverbeen there before,we knew we had been there before.”

“O dear Himalaya…why are you so amazing, can I kiss your peak or can I just let your silence speak…O dear Himalaya…”

“And blue-lung’d combers lumbered to the kill.”

“Poetry…… a place for the genuine,Hands that can grasp, eyesthat can dilate, hair that can rise”

“Some thirty inches from my noseThe frontier of my Person goes,And all the untilled air betweenIs private pagus or demesne.Stranger, unless with bedroom eyesI beckon you to fraternize,Beware of rudely crossing it:I have no gun, but I can spit.”

“Maya Angelou entered our lives at Virago in 1984, when we first published I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. “Entered our lives” is too tame. She danced, sang, and laughed her way straight into our hearts. She brought us a best-seller, but more than that, she brought us a reminder that the human need for dignity and recognition is a gift easily given to one another, but also frighteningly easy to withhold.”

“I’m heading for a clean-named placelike Wisconsin, and mad as a jack-o’-lantern, will get therewithout help and nosy proclivities.”

“For a lot of people, poetry tends to be dull. It’s not read much. It takes a special kind of training and a lot of practice to read poetry with pleasure. It’s like learning to like asparagus.”

“SOWING LIGHTNINGSeizeBolts of lightning from the skyAnd plant them in fields of life.They will grow like tender sprouts of fire.Charge somber thoughtsWith unexpected flash,You, my lightning in the soil!”

“I paid the taxi driver, got out with my suitcase, surveyed my surroundings, and just as I was turning to ask the driver something or get back into the taxi and return forthwith to Chillán and then to Santiago, it sped off without warning, as if the somewhat ominous solitude of the place had unleashed atavistic fears in the driver’s mind. For a moment I too was afraid. I must have been a sorry sight standing there helplessly with my suitcase from the seminary, holding a copy of Farewell’s Anthology in one hand. Some birds flew out from behind a clump of trees. They seemed to be screaming the name of that forsaken village, Querquén, but they also seemed to be enquiring who: quién, quién, quién. I said a hasty prayer and headed for a wooden bench, there to recover a composure more in keeping with what I was, or what at the time I considered myself to be. Our Lady, do not abandon your servant, I murmured, while the black birds, about twenty-five centimetres in length, cried quién, quién, quién. Our Lady of Lourdes, do not abandon your poor priest, I murmured, while other birds, about ten centimetres long, brown in colour, or brownish, rather, with white breasts, called out, but not as loudly, quién, quién, quién, Our Lady of Suffering, Our Lady of Insight, Our Lady of Poetry, do not leave your devoted subject at the mercy of the elements, I murmured, while several tiny birds, magenta, black, fuchsia, yellow and blue in colour, wailed quién, quién, quién, at which point a cold wind sprang up suddenly, chilling me to the bone.”