Either all lights are turned off or one inner light is missing.

It’s not what you go through that makes you strong: it is how you handle the situation that gives you strength.

Eternity is a glorious word, but eternity is ice.

A little bunny or some kind of ferret was probablythere too, and bore witness as only rodents can.

Stay away from the underground lake I implore,The Siren will see you are heard of no more.

He sits, strong and blunt as a Celtic cross, Clearly used to silence and an armchair: Tonight the wife and children will be quiet At slammed door and smoker’s cough in the hall.

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)

SEPTEMBER 1, 1939I sit in one of the divesOn Fifty-second StreetUncertain and afraidAs the clever hopes expireOf a low dishonest decade:Waves of anger and fearCirculate over the brightAnd darkened lands of the earth,Obsessing our private...

Men call you fayre, and you doe credit it,For that your self ye daily such doe see:But the trew fayre, that is the gentle wit,And vertuous mind, is much more praysd of me.For all the...

Did I live the spring I’d sought?It’s true in joy, I walked along,took part in dance, and sang the song.and never tried to bind an hourto my borrowed garden bower;nor did I once entreata day...

Liebe Tochter, zum Geburtstag kriegst duHöchstens E-Mail mit Musik.An die harte Matratze schmiegst dudeine Wange. Kunst ist Krieg.

I took her to bed with silk and song’Lay still, my love, I won’t be long,I must prepare my body for passion.”O, your body you give, but all else you ration…

Plato utterly condemns the poets for publishing trivial, false and indeed wicked stories about the gods, such as that they fight with each other, or are overcome by emotions like grief, anger, mirth. Reluctantly, he...

REFLECTIONS OF A MIRRORBeautiful is he who recognizes what is truly beautiful,Even if the surface is ugly.Truthful is he who says what is true,Even if the truth is ugly.Ugly is he who measures beauty by...

He is a type of our best — our rarest. Electrical, I was going to say, beyond anyone, perhaps, ever was: charged, surcharged. Not a founder of new philosophies — not of that build. But...

It’s better to have loved and lost than never love at all – I doubt that sorry statement every time I fall.

If you had told me, though, when I was twenty-four that I would write about Skokie, Illinois, where I grew up, I would have said, ‘You’re out of your mind. Why would I have Skokie...

After the leaves have fallen, we returnTo a plain sense of things. It is as ifWe had come to an end of the imagination,Inanimate in an inert savoir.

My favorite place in the world is next to you.

Be ahead of all parting, as though it already were behind you, like the winter that has just gone by. For among these winters there is one so endlessly winterthat only by wintering through it...

It could be yesterdaywhen I was less in loveI thinkFor I didn’t see you in the mirrorbehind mewhile getting dressed.The way your hands couldn’t stay awayand our bodies always found their ways back to each...

Truth can never be told so as to be understood and not be believed.

This is no occupation for an adult who can look other adults in the eye, carry his own weight, and count himself one of them.

Hinged to forgetfulnesslike a door,she slowly closed out ofsight,and she was the woman I loved,but too many times she slept likea mechanical deer in my caresses,and I ached in the metal silenceof her dreams.

A poem is a frozen momentmelted by each reader for themselvesto flow into the here and now.

What is that you express in your eyes? It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life.

The poet must be more useful than any other member if his tribe.

I’m Reginald Clark, I’m afraid of the darkSo please do not close this book on me.

Oh! That was poetry!” said Pippin. “Do you really mean to start before the break of day?

You lethargic, waiting upon me,waiting for the fire and Iattendant upon you, shaken by your beautyShaken by your beauty Shaken.

A poem needs imaginative rhythms as well as imaginative transformation of content.

[P]oetry resembles metaphysics: one does not mind one’s own, but one does not like anyone else’s.

WHEN we two parted In silence and tears, Half broken-hearted To sever for years, Pale grew thy cheek and cold, Colder thy kiss; Truly that hour foretold Sorrow to this. The dew of the morning...

The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right,White as a knuckle and terribly upset.It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quietWith the O-gape of complete...

Here’s a haiku/palindrome I wrote called, “Obsession.”Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob,Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob,Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob

A poet is an unhappy being whose heart is torn by secret suffrings, but whose lips are so strangely formed that when the sighs and the cries escape them, they sound like beautiful music. People...

You know you possess the soul of an artist when, each time you sit down to create, the whole universe lays itself at your feet.

… in the world, it will be women, mostly colored and poor. women will have to bury children, and support themselves through grief.

Results and RosesThe man who wants a garden fair,or small or very big,With flowers growing here and there,Must bend his back and dig.The things are mighty few on earthThat wishes can attain.Whate’er we want of...

Poetry must be as new as foam, and as old as the rock.

As a poet and as a mathematician, he would reason well; as a mere mathematician, he could not have reasoned at all.

I bring you with reverent handsThe books of my numberless dreams.

Sure, we thought the acresThat we tilled were sacred,But how could we have knownThat wheat can haunt like ghosts

We talk so abstractly about poetry because all of us are usually bad poets.

We thought everything would be forgotten, but I still remember yourclaws running down my back.I wonder if you still think about us,the way I do.How our legs would crash into each other in the middle...

Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down, ‘Twas sad as sad could be; And we did speak only to break The silence of the sea! All in a hot and copper sky, The bloody...

I sell black markers on the black market. I am personally responsible for 50% of all truck stop urinal poetry.

Early Morning in Your RoomIt’s morning. The brown scoops of coffee, the wasp-likeCoffee grinder, the neighbors still asleep.The gray light as you pour gleaming water–It seems you’ve traveled years to get here.Finally you deserve a...

Writing poetry is about learning to pare down the poem to the most essential words. Every word used has to be crucial to the poem.

Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim’rous beastie,O, what a panic’s in thy breastie!