I am alive to a usual objection to what is clearly part of my programme for the metier of poetry. The objection is that the doctrine requires a ridiculous amount of erudition (pedantry), a claim...

How happy is the little stoneThat rambles in the road alone,And doesn’t care about careers,And exigencies never fears;Whose coat of elemental brownA passing universe put on;And independent as the sun,Associates or glows alone,Fulfilling absolute decreeIn...

Poetry is the sound of the human animal.

While I was fearing it, it came,But came with less of fear,Because that fearing it so longHad almost made it dear.There is a fitting a dismay,A fitting a despair.’T is harder knowing it is due,Than...

give mea pillow of strongever-dependable shouldersthat i can bury my head in.

How—I didn’t know anyword for it—how “unlikely”. . .How had I come to be here,like them, and overheara cry of pain that could havegot loud and worse but hadn’t?

when whisperedwhat an exquisitesong, it makes-your name.

A poet is someone who stands outside in the rain hoping to be struck by lightning.

Look, moonI turned silver for you.

The philosophy of poetry must acknowledge that the poetic act has no past, at least no recent past, in which its preparation and appearance could be followed.

kisses… areand always will be the only language that I will have ever truly known.

I often repeat repeat myself,I often repeat repeat.I don’t don’t know why know why,I simply know that I I Iam am inclined to say to saya lot a lot this way this way-I often repeat...

and the afterglow…of your gaze…is the onlysweater that I need.

I have you fast in my fortress,And will not let you depart,But put you down into the dungeonIn the round-tower of my heart.And there will I keep you forever,Yes, forever and a day,Till the walls...

our feet are grape-squashed in memoriesour skins are still flushedfrom the touch of summer’s lips.

Words are fossilized butterfly wings,pretty to look at sometimes,but only good for Museums.I want to miserably burn down the Museums.

When someone offers you lines like that, he must be Mephistopheles and you must be Faust. You know you shouldn’t succumb to such language, but you succumb.

Promise me no promises, So will I not promise you: Keep we both our liberties, Never false and never true: Let us hold the die uncast, Free to come as free to go: For I...

we inhale life and exhale words. that’s just what writers’ do–

My heart born nakedwas swaddled in lullabies.Later alone it worepoems for clothes.Like a shirtI carried on my backthe poetry I had read.So I lived for half a centuryuntil wordlessly we met.From my shirt on the...

A woman knows very well that, though a wit sends her his poems, praises her judgment, solicits her criticism, and drinks her tea, this by no means signifies that he respects her opinions, admires her...

Could any State on Earth Immortall be,Venice by Her rare Goverment is She;Venice Great Neptunes Minion, still a Mayd,Though by the warrlikst Potentats assayed;Yet She retaines Her Virgin-waters pure,Nor any Forren mixtures can endure;Though, Syren-like...

Go to the poets, they will speak to theeMore perfectly of purer creatures–

Uni on varannut heidät itselleenkoko yöksi

as some strings, untouched,sound when no one is speaking.So it was when love slipped inside us.

Sufilere sohbet gerek Ahilere ahret gerek Mecnunlara Leyla gerek Bana seni gerek seni

A permanent pathThat, once illuminated,Goes ever onward – a way home…

Every pain, addiction, anguish, longing, depression, anger or fearis an orphaned part of usseeking joy, some disowned shadow wanting to returnto the lightand homeof ourselves.

Usually when your imagination is bigger then one’s comprehension, this normally means you’ve out grown the small circle. Get with like-mined people and go after your vision.By T-cupp

Let them Teach,Let them learn,let them pray,for the world is theirs.

To be a poet is a condition, not a profession.

Always learn poems by heart. They have to become the marrow in your bones. Like fluoride in the water, they’ll make your soul impervious to the world’s soft decay.

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

He needed some sort of membrane between himself and experience, which, for him, became language.(Jeanette Winterson on T.S.Eliot)

We must remember that there is a great difference between a myth and a miracle. A myth is the idealization of a fact. A miracle is the counterfeit of a fact. There is the same...

You do not need a boyfriend or a girlfriend to write an emotional poet; because poetry is beyond hooks and holes.

Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow worldLike a Colossus; and we petty menWalk under his huge legs, and peep aboutTo find ourselves dishonourable graves.

all right buddah gets a backstage pass but all his friends have to pay

But give thanks, at least, that you still have Frost’s poems; and when you feel the need of solitude, retreat to the companionship of moon, water, hills and trees. Retreat, he reminds us, should not...

A demon seduced an angel in the middle of the nightand they gave the stars a glimpse.There was nothing casual about it, it was tender skin and battle scars breathless passion under storm clouds a...

I am lost in my world,invisible – unknown.Moon please lend meyour light that someonewill me see me.

The poet: just another sleepwalker dreaming he’s awake.

Haleine contre haleine, échauffe-moi la vie,Mille et mille baisers donne-moi je te prie,Amour veut tout sans nombre, amour n’a point de loiTranslated: Breath against breath warms my life.A thousand kisses give me I pray thee.Love...

Love is a strange creature that no man can understand

I was asked once why I write poetry. I said, why do you breath?

That men, who might have tower’d in the vanOf all the congregated world, to fanAnd winnow from the coming step of timeAll chaff of custom, wipe away all slimeLeft by men-slugs and human serpentry,Have been...

She’s shed her skinsand plasma jeans, gets around in 2Kretro gear like the frock she wears today;a loose, white elegy to what’s been lost.Already she’s flowing back into herselfthe way a river flows to fill...

Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason.

Who could have foretoldthe heart grows oldfrom touching others

Envy won’t make you a better poet.