The poet doesn't invent. He listens.
Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.
Folks say I've never been quite right since - but they only say that because I'm a poet, and because nothing ever worries me. Poets are so rare in Blair Water folks don't understand them, and most people worry so much, they think you're not right if ...
Why are poets so apt to choose their mates, not for any similarity of poetic endowment, but for qualities which might make the happiness of the rudest handicraftsman as well as that of the ideal craftsman of the spirit? Because, probably, at his high...
Midnight" The hours glide Like drops of water on a window pane Midnight silence Fear unrolls in the air And the wind hides at the bottom of the well OH It's a leaf We think the earth is going to end Time stirs in the shadow Everyone is asleep A SIGH ...
New Song" For You, Manuelita Inside the Horizon SOMEONE WAS SINGING The voice Is not known WHERE DOES IT COME FROM Among the branches No one is to be seen The moon itself was an ear And one hears no sound However a star unnailed Has fallen into the p...
Morning" SUN That awakens Paris The highest poplar on the bank On The Eiffel Tower A tricolored cock Sings to the flapping of his wings and several feathers fall As it resumes its course The Seine looks between the bridges For her old route And the O...
Peace is not so much a political mandate as it is a shared state of consciousness that remains elevated and intact only to the degree that those who value it volunteer their existence as living examples of the same... Peace ends with the unraveling o...
Tell me about your Italian journey I am not ashamed I wept in that country beauty touched me I was a child once more in the womb of that country I wept I am not ashamed I have tried to return to paradise
The melancholy comes over me, the dismal misery of not knowing where I am, or perhaps losing any sense of who I am, as if the mist is bringing about an evaporation of identity, all the certainties of the self leaching away into the cloud.
Not having finished high school and having been fairly utilitarian in the way I went about college, I didn't have a deep liberal arts background. So we'd go to lunch and people would talk about their favorite seventeenth-century poets, and I'd be thi...
Even though I am the daughter of a poet, and my stepmother is also a poet, growing up, I didn't think I could understand poetry; I didn't think that it had any relevance to my life, the feelings that I endured on a day-to-day basis, until I was intro...
Neil: [quoting Henry David Thoreau] "I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life." Dalton: I'll second that. Neil: "To put to rout all that was not life; and not, when I had com...
John Keating: O Captain, my Captain. Who knows where that comes from? Anybody? Not a clue? It's from a poem by Walt Whitman about Mr. Abraham Lincoln. Now in this class you can either call me Mr. Keating, or if you're slightly more daring, O Captain ...
[after hearing "The Introduction to Poetry"] John Keating: Excrement! That's what I think of Mr. J. Evans Pritchard! We're not laying pipe! We're talking about poetry. How can you describe poetry like American Bandstand? "I like Byron, I give him a 4...
Todd Anderson: [talking about people listening to him] The point is, that there's nothing you can do about it. So you can just butt out. I can take care of myself just fine. Alright? Neil: [long pause] No. Todd Anderson: What do you mean 'no'? Neil: ...
Because misogynists are the best of men.” All the poets reacted to these words with hooting. Boccaccio was forced to raise his voice: “Please understand me. Misogynists don’t despise women. Misogynists don’t like femininity. Men have always b...
I shall be your poet! I do not want to be a poet for others; make your appearance, and I shall be your poet. I shall eat my own poem, and that will be my food. Or do you find me unworthy? Just as a temple dancer dances to the honor of the god Gudutl,...
'Therefore' is a word the poet must not know.
Always be a poet, even in prose.
If you cannot be a poet, be the poem.
