If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind....

I have found so much beauty in the dark,as I have found a lot of horror in the light.

At Blackwater Pond At Blackwater Pond the tossed waters have settledafter a night of rain.I dip my cupped hands. I drinka long time. It tasteslike stone, leaves, fire. It falls coldinto my body, waking the...

Nobody reads poetry anymoreSo who the hell are youI see bent over this book?

It nods and curtseys and recoversWhen the wind blows above,The nettle on the graves of loversThat hanged themselves for love.The nettle nods, the wind blows over,The man, he does not move,The lover of the grave,...

The vertical manThough we value noneBut the horizontal one.

If I had a soul I sold itfor pretty wordsIf I had a body I usedit up spurting my essenceAllen Ginsberg warns youdont follow my pathto extinction

Maya Angelou entered our lives at Virago in 1984, when we first published I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. “Entered our lives” is too tame. She danced, sang, and laughed her way straight into...

Love songs or poetry?Ambrose: Love songs–you get the best of both, poetry set to music.And you can’t dance to poetry.

People nowadays think that scientists exist to instruct them, poets, musicians, etc. to give them pleasure. The idea that these have something to teach them – that does not occur to them.

Writing an unwritten thing, read the unreadable.

Life is a poem most people never read.

A poem should not meanBut be.

Beauty Lies Within The unknown

I am tired, Beloved, of chafing my heart againstThe want of you;Of squeezing it into little inkdrops,And posting it.

It was language I loved, not meaning. I liked poetry better when I wasn’t sure what it meant. Eliot has said that the meaning of the poem is provided to keep the mind busy while...

Even the new things thatI less than know,I keep trying, did againuntil perfect.

I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets. Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps. I...

one doesn’t even think ofthe liverand if the liverdoesn’t think ofus, that’sfine.

Love is a clash of lightnings

We walked through night until there was a poem.

I am that last, thatfinal thing, the bodyin a white sheet listening,

Poetry is, among other things, a criticism of language.

Poetry expresses emotion. What does your inner poet convey?

You bothered yourself and changed the season. I was left behind with your awful sounds.

In math, the backwards E, ∃, means there exists. ∈ means part of a set. A line through that ∉ means excluded from. Everyone ∃, but not everyone ∈. We all feel that, unless we...

Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits.

Don’t Worry Be Happy

He [Mihaly Babits] hoped that some god might offer a bed to the river of words which rose to his lips, so that it might flow between ordered banks to the sea, there to vanish.

…at dawn, the grains of sleep turn to floating black spots, then out of focus the world tilts, and the cat scratches at the door…

Poetry: three mismatched shoes at the entrance of a dark alley.

It’s important to have your private enjoyments because sometimes that’s all we have.

There is another alphabet, whispering from every leaf, singing from every river, shimmering from every sky.

…I pluck every day from my sweater or chair, red hairs…strands of significance, traces of you in my life …

It’s not easy to write a poem about a poem.

He could build a city. Has a certain capacity. There’s a niche in his chestwhere a heart would fit perfectlyand he thinks if he could just maneuver one into place –well then, game over.

Pose your questions to people and you will get countless useless answers.

Poetry is the whispering of a truth by the shouting of the best possible lies

Death swallows death.

Little deer, I’ve stuffed all the world’s diseases inside you. / Your veins are thorns // and the good cells are lost in the deep dark woods / of your organs.

When within yourself you find the road, the right road will open.

Suddenly, everything was beautiful. The way she viewed the world was nothing more but a reflection of herself.

To say more while saying less is the secret of being simple.

There came one and knocked at the door of the Beloved.And a voice answered and said, ‘Who is there?’The lover replied, ‘It is I.”Go hence,’ returned the voice;’there is no room within for thee and...

There are boneswaiting for names in the graveyards.Even the sun above us is dying, onelanded repetition of light at a time.

She got inside me with her story. I could feel her flowing in me and far, faraway I related in parallel. Her smile was a reflection of my own brokenness. It defined buried feelings that...

No one here likes a wet dog.

A poet is simply an artist whose medium is human emotions. A poet chisels away at our own sensibilities, shaping our vision while molding our hearts. A poet wraps words around our own feelings and...

Christ did not ask or want to be what he was not.

If I wouldn’t of spent so much time shooting spit wads at my English teacher I’d know how to punctuate good thing I normally write poetry.