We must live with our hearts in our hands - like Mary. We must hold the blood- red heart and no be disappointed when others look away.
Like the kite that caught up to the sky, painted with clouds, I lost track of it, but it was connected by string, something I was holding, something I could always bring back.
Almost anything is too much. I am trying in my poems to have the reader be the experiencer. I do not want to be there. It is not even a walk we take together.
I believe in the importance of individuality, but in the midst of grief I also find myself wanting connection - wanting to be reminded that the sadness I feel is not just mine but ours.
When my mother was sick, I found myself needing to put down in my journals all sorts of things - to try to understand them, and, I think, to try to remember them.
Before I was ever a poet, my father was writing poems about me, so it was a turning of the tables when I became a poet and started answering, speaking back to his poems in ways that I had not before.
When I was growing up there, North Gulfport was referred to as 'Little Vietnam' because of the perception of crime and depravity within its borders - as if its denizens were simply a congregation of the downtrodden.
If the wild filly, "Progress," thou wouldst ride, Have young companions ever at thy side; But wouldst thou stride the stanch old mare, "Success," Go with thine elders, though they please thee less.
Which the Chicken and Which the Egg? He drinks because she scolds, he thinks; She thinks she scolds because he drinks; And nether will admit what's true, That he's a sot and she's a shrew.
It takes a certain amount of courage, he though, to face yourself and say with candor, I'm rotten. I've done evil and I will again. It was no accident; it emanated from the true, authentic me.
every particle being connected with every other; you can't fart without changing the balance in the universe. It makes living a funny joke with nobody around to laugh.
I believe in a relatively equal society, supported by institutions that limit extremes of wealth and poverty. I believe in democracy, civil liberties, and the rule of law. That makes me a liberal, and I’m proud of it.
It’s a thing of no great difficulty to raise objections against another man’s oration, it is a very easy matter; but to produce a better in its place is a work extremely troublesome.
I suppose for whatever reason I actively welcome being put down, something which perhaps goes back to my upbringing - that accusation of not being worthy which could be laid at one's door.
The ground swell is what's going to sink you as well as being what buoys you up. These are cliches also, of course, and I'm sometimes interested in how much one can get away with.
I wrote every day. I don't think I could have written 'Just Kids' had I not spent all of the 80s developing my craft as a writer.
...in that rich earth a richer dust concealed. (I'm flogging a dead horse w/ this one but this is the 1st time I've even seen this quotes feature! I just wanted to post something.)
Again like Williams, with the emphasis now regrettable, when a man makes a poem, makes it mind you, he takes the words as he finds them lying interrelated about him.
Scientists disagree among themselves but they never fight over their disagreements. They argue about evidence or go out and seek new evidence. Much the same is true of philosophers, historians and literary critics.
From a Darwinian perspective, it is clear what pain is doing. It's a warning: 'Don't do that again.' If you burn yourself, you're never going to pick up a live coal again.
We should take astrology seriously. No, I don't mean we should believe in it. I am talking about fighting it seriously instead of humouring it as a piece of harmless fun.
