Quotes from Sam Hamill

It would be nice if all the Republicans could put poetry in a little box and put the box under the bed and sit on it, but they can't.

I'm a poet who practices Zen. And it's not, I'm somebody who practices Zen who writes poetry. There's no separation for me.

George W. Bush is using language that's a mirror image of the language of Osama bin Laden when he says, "We have God on our side. This is the struggle of good against evil."

Nothing will change until we demolish the "we-they" mentality. We are human, and therefore all human concerns are ours. And those concerns are personal.

Don't tell me about the seasons in the East, don't talk to me about eternal California summer. It's enough to have a few days naked among three hundred kinds of rain.

Winter rain on moss soundlessly recalls those happy bygone days

Poetry transcends the nation-state. Poetry transcends government. It brings the traditional concept of power to its knees. I have always believed poetry to be an eternal conversation in which the ancient poets remain contemporary, a conversation inviting us into other languages and cultures even as poetry transcends language and culture, returning us again and again to primal rhythms and sounds.

Nothing in the cry of cicadas suggests they are about to die

How reluctantly the bee emerges from deep within the peony

When the mind stops striving, the world's not a problem. A constant heart won't waver from the truth.

I STAND here and watch the people of this world: all against one and one against all, angry, arguing, plotting and scheming. Then one day, suddenly, they die. And each gets one plot of ground: four feet wide, six feet long. If you can scheme your way out of that plot, I'll set the stone that immortalizes your name.

With dewdrops dripping, I wish somehow I could wash this perishing world

In pale moonlight the wisteria's scent comes from far away

Beauty and ugliness have one origin. Name beauty, and ugliness is. Recognizing virtue recognizes evil. Is and is not produce one another. The difficult is born in the easy, long is defined by short, the high by the low.

It's best to be like water, nurturing the ten thousand things without competing, flowing into places people scorn, very like the Tao. Make the earth a dwelling place. Cultivate the heart and mind. Practice benevolence. Stand by your word. Govern with equity. Serve skillfully. Act in a timely way, without contentiousness, free of blame.

I write in my notebook with the intention of stimulating good conversation, hoping that it will also be of use to some fellow traveler. But perhaps my notes are mere drunken chatter, the incoherent babbling of a dreamer. If so, read them as such.

Summer grasses: all that remains of great soldiers' imperial dreams

I go out alone to visit a man alone in this autumn dusk

This cold winter night, that old wooden-head buddha would make a nice fire

Thus spring begins: old stupidities repeated, new errs invented

With a warbler for a soul, it sleeps peacefully, this mountain willow.

CALL it loneliness, that deep, beautiful color no one can describe: over these dark mountains, the gathering autumn dusk.

I believe the poem is a sacramental act, pure devotion to whatever may be revealed only through the music of intuition. The dance of the intellect, the dance of wild imagination, illuminates what cannot otherwise be known.

Is and is not produce one another. The difficult is born in the easy, long is defined by short, the high by the low. Instrument and voice achieve one harmony. Before and after have places. That is why the sage can act without effort and teach without words, nurture things without possessing them, and accomplish things without expecting merit: only one who makes no attempt to possess it cannot lose it.