All Quotes By Tag: Poetry

“You can make a difference in another person’s life and not realize it, just by giving them One Moment of your time, One Memory to recall, One Motion that tells them they are not alone! OM!”

“All the new thinking is about loss. In this it resembles all the old thinking”

“Higgledy piggledy, my black hen,She lays eggs for gentlemen.Gentlemen come every dayTo count what my black hen doth lay.If perchance she lays too many,They fine my hen a pretty penny;If perchance she fails to lay,The gentlemen a bonus pay.Mumbledy pumbledy, my red cow,She’s cooperating now.At first she didn’t understandThat milk production must be planned;She didn’t understand at firstShe either had to plan or burst,But now the government reportsShe’s giving pints instead of quarts.Fiddle de dee, my next-door neighbors,They are giggling at their labors.First they plant the tiny seed,Then they water, then they weed,Then they hoe and prune and lop,They they raise a record crop,Then they laugh their sides asunder,And plow the whole caboodle under.Abracadabra, thus we learnThe more you create, the less you earn.The less you earn, the more you’re given,The less you lead, the more you’re driven,The more destroyed, the more they feed,The more you pay, the more they need,The more you earn, the less you keep,And now I lay me down to sleep.I pray the Lord my soul to takeIf the tax-collector hasn’t got it before I wake.”

“The Way It IsThere’s a thread you follow. It goes amongthings that change. But it doesn’t change.People wonder about what you are pursuing.You have to explain about the thread.But it is hard for others to see.While you hold it you can’t get lost.Tragedies happen; people get hurtor die; and you suffer and get old.Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.You don’t ever let go of the thread.~ William Stafford ~”

“The new world is as yetbehind the veil of destinyIn my eyes, howeverits dawn has been unveiled”

“I yearn to make these scars disappearAnd to forget about the past.To throw away all of my fearsAnd to be happy at last.”

“I – will have poetry in my life. And adventure. And love. Love above all.”

“As a poet and as a mathematician, he would reason well; as a mere mathematician, he could not have reasoned at all.”

“Much Madness is Divinest Sense, to a Discerning Eye….”

“A skillful literary artist has constructed a tale. If wise, he has not fashioned his thoughts to accommodate his incidents; but having conceived, with deliberate care, a certain unique or single effect to be wrought out, he then invents as may best aid him in establishing this preconceived effect. If his very initial sentence tend not to the outbringing of this effect, then he has failed in his first step. In the whole composition there should be no words written, of which the tendency, direct or indirect, is not to the one pre-established design. And by such means, with such care and skill, a picture is at length painted which leaves in the mind of him who contemplates it with a kindred art, a sense of the fullest satisfaction. The idea of the tale has been presented unblemished because undisturbed: and this is an end unattainable by the novel. Undue brevity is just as exceptionable here as in the poem; but undue length is yet more to be avoided.”

“As she bends for a Kleenex in the dark, I am thinking of other girls: the girl I loved who fell in love with a lion–she lost her head over it–we just necked a lot; of the girl who fell in love with the tightrope, got addicted to getting high wired and nothing else was enough; all the beautiful, damaged women who have come through my life and I wonder what would have happened if I’d met them sooner, what they were like before they were so badly wounded. All this time I thought I’d been kissing, but maybe I’m always doing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, kissing dead girls in hopes that the heart will start again. Where there’s breath, I’ve heard, there’s hope.”

“There is nothinggoing on. I took nothingyou wanted. You can’thave it back.”

“Sprawled out on the front lawn Looking up at an ordinary sky It could fall on me and somehow be The day I didn’t die”

“Don’t you just love poetry that gives you a crinkly feeling up and down your back?”

“…the wet brush of snowflakes was like your kisses everywhere …”