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 think it was Milosz, the Polish poet, who when he lay in a doorway and watched the bullets lifting the cobbles out of the street beside him realised that most poetry is not equipped...

Poetry should be like ‘Uh-huh. Baby has to have it.

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.

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.

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!

I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another til I drop.

Would you like some warm Spring pie?Then, take a cup of clear blue sky.Stir in buzzes from a bee,Add the laughter of a tree.A dash of sunlight should sufficeTo give the dew a hint of...

I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength. I stand...

Think neither fear nor courage saves us.Unnatural vices are fathered by our heroism. Virtues are forced upon us by our impudent crimes. These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.

Poetry is man’s rebellion against being what he is.

HappinessSo early it’s still almost dark out.I’m near the window with coffee,and the usual early morning stuffthat passes for thought.When I see the boy and his friendwalking up the roadto deliver the newspaper.They wear caps...

To see the Summer SkyIs Poetry, though never in a Book it lie—True Poems flee—

I had embraced you…long before i hugged you.