Stephen Vincent Benet Quotes

As for what you're calling hard luck - well, we made New England out of it. That and codfish.

A phrase may come to me as I am walking, and, once I write it down in my journal, the rest of the poem will unravel from that catalyst.

I do think that the kind of writing that I do will always be around and printed in books, magazines, and now blogs.

Most of the time I'm not really attracted to writing that's focused on filling and fighting it out within a well-defined container. I like work that gets out in the world and lets the world shape the poem.

When the last moonshiner buys his radio,
And the last, lost, wild-rabbit of a girl
Is civilized with a mail-order dress,
Something will pass that was American
And all the movies will not bring it back.

Whatever poetry that was in me was coming out in the form of constructing art books!

We cannot afford the creeping paralysis that destroys the effective will of democracy - the paralysis carried by hate and rancor, between class and class, person and person, party and party, as plague is carried through the streets of a town.

Grant us brotherhood, not only for this day but for all our years - a brotherhood not of words but of acts and deeds.

It's time to walk to the cider mill
Through air like apple wine,
And watch the moon rise over the hill,
stinging and hard and fine.
It's time to bury your seed pods deep
And let them wait and be warm.
It's time to sleep the heavy sleep
That does not wake for the storm.

The art finds kingdoms in a foot of ground.

The ant finds kingdoms in a foot of ground.

Trouble with women. Can't do any art and be married if you're in love with your wife.

Defeat is a fact and victory can be a fact. If the idea is good, it will survive defeat, it may even survive the victory.

Money is sullen And wisdom is sly, But youth is the pollen That blows through the sky And does not ask why.

Something begins, begins;Starlit and sunlit, something walks abroadIn flesh and spirit and fire.Something is loosed to change the shaken world.

The blog is also a way to continue to register what I see and hear in a day - no matter what the form. In fact, my blog is a complete mixture of forms.

Books are not men and yet they are alive.

I've been reading a lot lately about Indian captives. One woman who had been captured by the Indians and made a squaw was resentful when she was rescued because she'd found that there was a lot more work to do as the wife of a white man.

Let each one of us say, 'I am an American. I intend to stay an American. I will do my best to wipe from my heart hate, rancor and political prejudice. I will sustain my government. And, through good days or bad, I will try to serve my country.'

When my own writing needs a perk, I open Zukofsky and read from "A" - particularly sections "22" and "23." It can be opaque, but I love the intensity.

Go play with the towns you have built of blocks, The towns where you would have bound me! I sleep in my earth like a tired fox, And my bufdfalo have found me.

At first I was blogging everyday, but I don't do that anymore. It varies; sometimes I'll write these little essays and other times political commentaries. Other times it'll just be new work that I'm doing.

If two New Hampshiremen aren't a match for the devil, we might as well give the country back to the Indians.

You can't depend on the kind of folks people think they are - you've got to go by what they do. And I wouldn't give much for a man that some folks hadn't thought was a fool, in his time.

Basically when I'm walking I'm not consciously writing or intending anything. In the manner I have learned from meditation practice, I let things unfold.

It is better the truth should come little by little. I have learned that, being a priest. Perhaps, in the old days, they ate knowledge too fast.

Truth is a hard deer to hunt. If you eat too much truth at once, you may die of the truth.

I admire the attention other writers can give to the world we're walking in.

Yes, Dan'l Webster's dead - or, at least, they buried him. But every time there's a thunderstorm around Marshfield, they say you can hear his rolling voice in the hollows of the sky.

It is hard to put aside partisanship. It is hard to give up the easy wisecracking jeer that divides and destroys. It is hard - very hard - to have worked sincerely and wholeheartedly for a cause and to have lost. Most of all, it is hard to put aside personal prejudices. And yet we must put these things aside.

Life is not lost by dying; life is lost minute by minute, day by dragging day, in all the thousand small uncaring ways.

Seine and Piave are silver spoons,
But the spoonbowl-metal is thin and worn

You work hard, and you'll rise. But, if you've got any foolish notions, just knock them on the head and forget them.

Treat a boy like a fool and he'll act like a fool, I say, but there's some folks need convincing.

You can take off your hats now, gentlemen, and I think perhaps you'd better.

When Daniel Boone goes by at night
The phantom deer arise
And all lost, wild America
Is burning in their eyes.

I shall not rest quiet in Montparnasse.
I shall not lie easy at Winchelsea.
You may bury my body in Sussex grass,
You may bury my tongue at Champmedy.
I shall not be there. I shall rise and pass.
Bury my heart at Wounded Knee

Technology will never rescue anyone from being a bad poet, but if you're good, it has the potential to do a lot of exciting things.

God pity us indeed, for we are human,And do not always seeThe vision when it comes, the shining change,Or, if we see it, do not follow it,Because it is too hard, too strange, too new,Too unbelievable, too difficult,Warring too much with common, easy ways,And now I know this, standing in this light,Who have been half alive these many years,Brooding on my own sorrow, my own pain,Saying I am a barren bough. ExpectNor fruit nor blossom from a barren bough.

When I was in graduate school, my thesis included both poetry and essays. Influenced by the personal essays of James Baldwin and Norman Mailer, I loved the form, but pretty much stopped.

A man with a mouth like a mastiff, a brow like a mountain, and eyes like burning antracite - that was Dan'l Webster in his prime.

You call my candidate a horse thief, and I call yours a lunatic, and we both of us know it's just till election day. It's an American custom, like eating corn on the cob. And, afterwards, we settle down quite peaceably and agree we've got a pretty good country - until next election.

American Muse, whose strong and diverse heart So many men have tried to understand But only made it smaller with their art, Because you are as various as your land.

Even in hell, if a man was a man, you'd know it.

Life was a storm to wander through.

There is a wilderness we walk alone
However well-companioned

I think a blog is a catalyst for a number of possible kinds of writing besides being its own medium.

We thought, because we had power, we had wisdom.

Honesty is as rare as a man without self-pity.

Occasionally I encounter people getting into their cars who will say, "Oh, you haven't been walking lately" - like I'm a symbol of the ancient art of walking!

It is forbidden to go east, but I have gone, forbidden to go on the great river, but I am there. Open your hearts, you spirits, and hear my song.