Quotes About Poems

T)here was no missing the enormous irony of the fact that from Russia--"a country where her poems were needed, like bread, she had ended up in a country where nobody needed her or anyone else's poems. Even Russian people in emigration ceased to need them," Tsvetaeva said, "And that made Russian poets miserable.

The only difference between me and others is that they think they can change something with cute little poems, nice cards or embracing trees and being nice to little lapdogs.

GIFT You tell me that silence is nearer to peace than poems but if for my gift I brought you silence (for I know silence) you would say This is not silence this is another poem and you would hand it back to me

Hypocrisy, false labels, can create slogans but no poems; propaganda but not life: there are no roots, there are no realities to nurture creative work.

It is very difficult to pass from pleasure to work. Accordingly more poems have been swallowed up by sorrow than ever happiness caused to blaze forth in unparalleled radiance.

I recall that one time he told the people to read the poems out loud because the spoken word was the seed of love in the darkness.

In many poems voice is the mysterious atmosphere that makes it memorable, that holds it together and aloft like the womb around an embryo.

These and other tools help poems call our attention to moments when the ordinary nature of experience changes--when the things we think we know flare into brighter colors, starker contrasts, strange and intoxicating possibilities.

I have seized upon documents, poems, letters; in short, j'ai pris mon bien là où je l'ai trouvé, and within a context of general historical accuracy I have changed names, places and minor events to suit my tale.

It was strange how these poems came to him nowadays, the distillation of his private emotions, of his disillusionment, of his solitude, of his yearning for a future in which, nevertheless, he could not believe.

Poems are language turned into art; sound and sense matter; they can be as long or longer than The Odyssey or as short or shorter than a haiku. Not very helpful.

Translated books rarely get reviewed in the press. Books or poems or works of art that don't seem to have a corresponding style or figure or theme, obviously they're hard to digest.

I work backwards with the ending in mind as I create art, stories, poems and books. Always in a process of becoming.

WINGS LOVE: POEMS

I like to hope that Rumi's poems, even in translation, carry the essence of the transforming friendship of Rumi and Shams, that the sun can reappear, whole and radiant in any one of us at any moment.

Pamphlets can consist of anything from around twelve to about thirty poems. They allow us to select and reject pieces, to space out main themes, to consider the dynamics of sub-sections or sequences, and to decide on opening and closing poems. Like individual poems, they require titles and possibly epigraphs, which makes us contemplate the most important impression we wish to give from this grouping of our work.

I never even considered writing a career option. I just liked the play of words. I was certainly interested in story, but the stories I was telling then were in narrative verse and prose poems, short and succinct, except for one novel-length poem written in narrative couplets.

A blend of fact and fiction has been used in various forms since the dawn of creative writing, starting with sagas and epic poems.

But in a lot of ways my poems are very conventional, and it's no big deal for me to write a poem in either free verse or strict form; modern poets can, and do, do both.

She could become a spinster, like Emily Dickinson, writing poems full of dashes and brilliance, and never gaining weight.

To her surprise, Madeleine found herself contemplating this proposal. Why not tell her parents everything, curl up in the backseat of the car, and let them take her home? She could move into her old bedroom, with the sleigh bed and the Madeline wallpaper. She could become a spinster, like Emily Dickinson, writing poems full of dashes and brilliance, and never gaining weight.

I believe that poets have to be inside their poems somewhere, or the poem won't work.

You will see this book takes twists and turns. Welcome to the pinball machine of my mind. Here, authenticity lives with eccentricity. A delicious diet, if a bit unsteady. My poems, my puns, my spiritual side trips, and the names of friends, both famous and infamous, dropped along the way – I can't stop myself. I can't help myself. So come along. It's dangerous, but indulge me. We will travel with lightning speed because I've led a lightning-speed life.

yes, I know what you loved, brooding by the shore, your cheek in your still-damp hand, thinking, —Vicente Aleixandre, from "Tragic Destiny," A Longing for the Light: Selected Poems (Copper Canyon Press, 2007)