Often I find that poems predict what I'm going to do later in my own writing, and often I find that poems predict my life. So I think poetry is the most intense expression of feeling that we have.
Imagine writing a poem with a sweating, worried-looking boy handing you a different pencil at the end of every word. My golf, you may say, is no poem; nevertheless, I keep wanting it to be one.
Hopkins: [reading his poem] "The cat sat on the mat" John Keating: Congratulations, Mr. Hopkins. You have the first poem to ever have a negative score on the Pritchard scale.
Listeners are kind of ambushed... if a poem just happens to be said when they're listening to the radio. The listener doesn't have time to deploy what I call their 'poetry deflector shields' that were installed in high school - there's little time to...
Poems have a different music from ordinary language, and every poem has a different kind of music of necessity, and that's, in a way, the hardest thing about writing poetry is waiting for that music, and sometimes you never know if it's going to come...
I think a lover, when broken, is given a gift not a scar, not a poem, not a rhyme (unless it fits.) I think as humans, we see a set of hues but when wounded, we see something more: deeper shades of hurt and worry, colors never seen before. Because I ...
On the beach, at dawn: Four small stones clearly Hugging each other. How many kinds of love Might there be in the world, And how many formations might they make And who am I ever To imagine I could know Such a marvelous business? When the sun broke I...
Teacher: What have we here, laddie? Mysterious scribblings? A secret code? No! Poems, no less! Poems, everybody! [classmates laughs] Teacher: The laddie reckons himself a poet! [reads poem from Pink's little black book] Teacher: "Money, get back / I'...
I’m in no hurry: the sun and the moon aren’t, either. Nobody goes faster than the legs they have. If where I want to go is far away, I’m not there in an instant. (6/20/1919)
Tell her this And more,— That the king of the seas Weeps too, old, helpless man. The bustling fates Heap his hands with corpses Until he stands like a child With surplus of toys.
When the prophet, a complacent fat man, Arrived at the mountain-top He cried: "Woe to my knowledge! I intended to see good white lands And bad black lands— But the scene is grey.
There are no barriers to poetry or prophecy; by their nature they are barrier-breakers, bursts of perceptions, lines into infinity. If the poet lies about his vision he lies about himself and in himself; this produces a true barrier.
Consummation is consumption. We cannot consummate our bliss and not consume. All joys are cakes and vanish in eating. All bliss is sugar's melting in the mouth.
What passing bells for these who die as cattle? Only the monstrous anger of the guns. Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle Can patter out their hasty orisons.
If wild my breast and sore my pride, I bask in dreams of suicide, If cool my heart and high my head I think 'How lucky are the dead.
Trying to build myself up with the fact that I have done things right that were even good and have had moments that were excellent but the bad is heavier to carry around and feel have no confidence.
From a distance I finally see, I completely understand, As I move forward to take my second step, Followed by a third step, Oh! You are easy to love like a sponge.
Love's language is imprecise, fits more like mittens than gloves.
Love is a madman, working his wild schemes, tearing off his clothes, running through the mountains, drinking poison, and now quietly choosing annihilation.
I think that the world should be full of cats and full of rain, that's all, just cats and rain, rain and cats, very nice, good night.
I can see where creation often stops while the body still lives and often does not care to. the death of life before life dies.
