Recuerdo que algún día yo le hablé de mi río y una como tormenta se agitó en sus estrañas. No sé si fue mi pecho que tembló de recuerdo o si fueron mis ojos que...

sometimes all we need to be able to continue aloneare the deadrattling the wallsthat close us in.

Escóndeme en tus brazospor esta noche sola,mientras la lluvia rompecontra el mar y la tierrasu boca innumerable.

Criticism is like politics: if you don’t make your own you are by default accepting the status quo and are finally yourself responsible for whatever the status quo does to you.

Memory revises me.

I came to explore the wreck. / The words are purposes. / The words are maps. / I came to see the damage that was done / and the treasures that prevail.

Oh, there are no living poets, Miss Van Damn. We’re not entirely sure there ever were. They’ve found some shreds of sonnets in England and, embedded in a chalk wall of a cave in France,...

Wise wretch! with pleasures too refined to please,With too much spirit to be e’er at ease,With too much quickness ever to be taught,With too much thinking to have common thought:You purchase pain with all that...

I am she who lifts the mountainsWhen she goes to hunt,Who wears mamba for a headbandAnd a lion for a belt.Beware!I swallow elephants wholeAnd pick my teeth with rhinoceros horns,I drink up rivers to get...

Passers-byPassers-by,Out of your many facesFlash memories to meNow at the day endAway from the sidewalksWhere your shoe soles traveledAnd your voices rose and blentTo form the city’s afternoon roarHindering an old silence.Passers-by,I remember lean ones...

I have met with most poetry on trunks; so that I am pat to consider the trunk-maker as the sexton of authorship

I am suggesting that the radical of poetry lies not in theresolution of doubts but in their proliferation

…across the snowy field the barn light gleams – it’s the loneliness of November twilight…

The statement ‘There is nothing more American than an Indian’ happens to be a multidimensional paradox. Try and not say too many of those. That might open your mind to ideas that could cause sanity...

You may continue to call it a breakup. I will continue to call it an exorcism.

To come to nothing through something is the way to outside from both sides.

I am inclined to trust you. You shouldn’t be like that with another man, not ever; but I can’t help it. I felt it strongly from the instant I heard your voice; and though I...

Total knowledge is annihilation Of the desire to see, to touch, to feel The world sensed only through senses And immune to the knowledge without feeling.

We pull our boots on with both handsbut we can’t punch ourselves awake and all I can do is stand on the curb and say Sorryabout the blood in your mouth. I wish it was...

Since nothing is absolute There is no absolute silence, Only an appearance Of temporary peace.

If I could find one wordthat would shudder the airlike that frightened sob,that wordless prayerof my newly-born,who drew one breath,and with unopened eyessank back into death;If I could break the world’s cold heartwith that cry,then...

In the biggest and the smallest I sleep but at the same place I stay.

If you want to annoy a poet, explain his poetry.

I had to learn to live without you and I couldn’t make sense of it, because I left so much of me inside of you.

There is only as much space, only as much time, Only as much desire, only as many words, Only as many pages, only as much ink To accept all of us at light-speed Hurrying into...

I know how you feel because I’ve been there too. I’ve hated and I’ve loved. I’ve seen my demons root and crawl and my angels branch and soar. I’ve died within myself and lived a...

Darkness moves like a pack of wild dogs.The wind moves like a wounded animal.The ground must be full of teeth by now.

Sparrows and cats will live in my shoe,Sooner than I will live with you.Fish will come walking out of the sea,Sooner than you will come back to me.

Picnic, LightningIt is possible to be struck by a meteoror a single-engine planewhile reading in a chair at home.Safes drop from rooftopsand flatten the odd pedestrianmostly within the panels of the comics,but still, we know...

Determined, I riseand face the dawn with resolve.This time I will win.

He thought others were small; that was his greatness.

There’s two ways to become a famous Poet, find that one person that knows somebody, that knows somebody, that knows somebody.Or die trying

A smiling lie is a whirlwind, easy to enter, but hard to escape.

If there has been one overriding change in poetic practice, it is that under the influence of free verse the poets have made a primary virtue out of exactitude and economy of meaning: this has...

My emotions have already spilled out on a canvas; I need you my king, to rescue me from the madness!

JASON: ‘Intended wings.’ How depressing.MICHAEL: Yes. Makes them into suicides, really, the pigeons.JASON: No – no, it doesn’t. It could mean the wings were ‘intended’ to carry them upwards, out of the darkness, but they...

Every good poem asks a question, and every good poet asks every question.

Have you ever wondered What happens to all the poems people write?The poems they neverlet anyone else read?Perhaps they are Too private and personalPerhaps they are just not good enough.Perhaps the prospect of such a...

i do not know what it is about you that closesand opens;only something in me understandsthe voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses

A.E.Housman’No one, not even Cambridge was to blame(Blame if you like the human situation):Heart-injured in North London, he becameThe Latin Scholar of his generation.Deliberately he chose the dry-as-dust,Kept tears like dirty postcards in a drawer;Food...

Pity me that the heart is slow to learnWhat the swift mind beholds at every turn.

part memory part distance remainingmine in the ways that I learn to miss you

Harold’s Bow and FoodBowl bowl bowl bowlFood food food foodThe miracle of the heavenly restaurantI mouth thisgreat dark sad eveningSuddenly they come for me in a limousineHow could I have believed I was vanquishedI never...

When the shadows shroud the woods,And the mountains are empty and bare;I am flying with the crow…

McGough: I’m sorry. I’m afraid I’ve caught poetry. Mr Bones: Oh really? Well, don’t worry, sir – I used to suffer from short stories.McGough: Really? When?Mr Bones: Oh, once upon a time …

Irish improves a poet.

He hoped and feared,’ continued Solon, in a low. mournful voice; ‘but at times he was very miserable, because he did not think it possible that so much happiness was reserved for him as the...

After the final no there comes a yes / And on that yes the future world depends.

But I was youngand didn’t know betterand someone should have told me to capture every secondevery kiss & every nightBecause now I’m sitting here alone and it’s getting really hard to breath because tears are...

A billion stars go spinning through the night, / glittering above your head, / But in you is the presence that will be / when all the stars are dead.