All Quotes By Tag: Poetry

“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.”

“We can’t choose our poetic fathers any more than our biological ones — but we can choose how to come to terms with them.”

“Make me, dear Lord, polite and kind, To everyone, I pray.And may I ask you how you find Yourself, dear Lord, today?”

“…Thought lengths it, pulls an invisible world through a needle’s eye one detail at a time, …”

“Poetry is dancing with words.”

“Heavy as such things areAfter the wordslide, the writing begins.”From “Word Quake”

“One day I might feel Mean,And squinched up inside,Like a mouth sucking on a Lemon.The next day I couldFeelWhole and happyAnd right,Like an unbitten apple.”

“If you can’t beat em: Poem.”

“What else is a poem about?The rhythm and the images buried in the language. All the ways you can build an emotion with words, but you can’t just write ‘I feel sad.’ I mean, you can, but it’s not poetry… I think it has to be experienced instead of studied. You step into it.”

“How do I feel today? I feel as unfit as an unfiddle,And it is the result of a certain turbulence in the mind and an uncertain burbulence in the middle.What was it, anyway, that angry thing that flew at me?I am unused to banshees crying Boo at me.Your wife can’t be a banshee—Or can she?”

“ONE WORDOne word— one stonein a cold river.One more stone—I’ll need many stonesif I’m going to get over.”

“BeautyIs the fume-track of necessity. This thought Is therapeutic.If, after severalApplications, you do not findRelief, consult your family physician”

“In the country whereto I goI shall not see the face of my friendNor her hair the color of sunburnt grasses;Together we shall not findThe land on whose hills bends the new moonIn air traversed of birds.What have I thought of love?I have said, “It is beauty and sorrow.”I have thought that it would bring me lost delights, and splendorAs a wind out of old time . . .But there is only the evening here,And the sound of willowsNow and again dipping their long oval leaves in the water.– from “Betrothed”

“Song of myselfA child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands; How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he. I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven. Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord, A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt, Bearing the owner’s name someway in the corners, that we may see and remark, and say Whose? Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the vegetation.”