Quotes About Poetry

In my first draft every sentence I put down is to advance the story. Each subsequent draft - the 3rd, the 7th, the 27th - is trying to turn each of those sentences into a poem.

TELL ALL THE TRUTH but tell it slant, says my friend Emily Dickinson.

Why do you suppose the poets talk about hearts?' he asked me suddenly. 'When they discuss emotional damage? The tissue of hearts is tough as a shoe. Did you ever sew up a heart?

On a bare branch a crow is perched - autumn evening

Mountain-rose petals Falling, falling, falling now... Waterfall music

Ballet in the air... Twin butterflies until, twice white They Meet, they mate

Real poetry, is to lead a beautiful life. To live poetry is better than to write it.

Even in Kyoto/Hearing the cuckoo's cry/I long for Kyoto

Any healthy man can go without food for two days--but not without poetry.

Lecteur paisible et bucolique, Sobre et naïf homme de bien, Jette ce livre saturnien, Orgiaque et mélancolique. Si tu n'as fait ta rhétorique Chez Satan, le rusé doyen, Jette ! tu n'y comprendrais rien, Ou tu me croirais hystérique. Mais si, sans se laisser charmer, Ton oeil sait plonger dans les gouffres, Lis-moi, pour apprendre à m'aimer ; Ame curieuse qui souffres Et vas cherchant ton paradis, Plains-moi !... sinon, je te maudis !

Explanations are such cheap poetry. My

Then they were all standing and applauding, yeah, they were giving him a fucking standing O, and in their faces he saw what every poet or would-be poet hopes to see when he or she finished reading: the faces of people suddenly awakened from a dream brighter than any reality.

One difference between poetry and lyrics is that lyrics sort of fade into the background. They fade on the page and live on the stage when set to music.

Music straightjackets a poem and prevents it from breathing on its own, whereas it liberates a lyric. Poetry doesn't need music; lyrics do.

The poet and the engineer (and the coral reef) may seem a million miles apart in their particular forms of expertise, but when they bring good ideas into the world, similar patterns of development and collaboration shape that process.

I rap for the trees...for the trees have no tongues.

the comfort of the infinite and never lost his taste for the poetic

Like the illustrated books of his childhood, he grafted words to images and images to words, insistently reshaping both to his narrative of reassurance. He paired pictures with poetry, sometimes transcribing lines from literature and scripture directly onto his prints to create collages of consolation. This process of layering words and images so gratified his manic imagination and his search for comfort that it would become his principal way of seeing and coping with the world.

Words make love with one another.

When I forget that the stars shine in air-- When I forget that beauty is in stars-- When I forget that love with beauty is-- Will I forget thee: till then all things else.

But let my due feet never fail To walk the studious cloisters pale, And love the high embowed roof, With antique pillars massy proof, And storied windows richly dight; Casting a dim religious light.

Sweet springtime is my time is your time is our time for springtime is love time and viva sweet love.

O Helena, goddess, nymph, perfect, divine! To what, my love, shall I compare thine eyne? Crystal is muddy. O, how ripe in show Thy lips, those kissing cherries, tempting grow!

A strip of water's spread in the setting sun, Half the river's emerald, half is red. I love the third night of the ninth month, The dew is like a pearl; the moon like a bow.