2019 Poetry Quotes

...then we'll journey
until we find the world in which we both fit.
And when the path grows too dark to see even
the bright parts of me, have faith in the sound
of my voice. I'm here. I'm still the one leading. ~ Paige Lewis

Good poetry and successful revolution change our lives. And you cannot compose a good poem or wage a revolution without changing consciousness unless you attack the language that you share with your enemies and invent a language that you share with your allies. ~ June Jordan

The stars are forth, the moon above the tops
Of the snow-shining mountains. - Beautiful!
I linger yet with Nature, for the night
Hath been to me a more familiar face
Than that of man; and in her starry shade
Of dim and solitary loveliness,
I learn'd the language of another world. ~ George Gordon Byron

You touched my heart...ever so softly
and I realized
tears had never been...merely salt

and the rain
Oh the Rain!
had never been merely water. ~ Sanober Khan

Poetry is music written for the human voice. ~ Maya Angelou

Here's a hand to the boy who has courage
To do what he knows to be right;
When he falls in the way of temptation,
He has a hard battle to fight.
Who strives against self and his comrade
Will find a most powerful foe.
All honor to him if he conquers.
A cheer for the boy who says, "No!"

There's many a battle fought daily
The world knows nothing about;
There's many a brave little soldier
Whose strength puts a legion to rout.
And he who fights sin singlehanded
Is more of a hero, I say,
Than he who leads soldiers to battle
And conquers by arms in the fray.

Be steadfast, my boy, when you're tempted,
To do what you know to be right.
Stand firm by the colors of manhood,
And you will o'ercome in the fight.
"The right," be your battle cry ever
In waging the warfare of life,
And God, who knows who are the heroes,
Will give you the strength for the strife. ~ Phoebe Cary

history is what it is. it knows what it did. ~ Danez Smith

A living body is not a fixed thing but a flowing event, like a flame or a whirlpool: the shape alone is stable, for the substance is a stream of energy going in at one end and out at the other. We are particularly and temporarily identifiable wiggles in a stream that enters us in the form of light, heat, air, water, milk, bread, fruit, beer, beef Stroganoff, caviar, and pate de foie gras. It goes out as gas and excrement - and also as semen, babies, talk, politics, commerce, war, poetry, and music. And philosophy. ~ Alan Watts

To discover the source of this alchemical love within is to uncover the deepest secrets of the soul. It is to unearth and align with the ultimate truth of who we are. ~ Atalina Wright

In the distance, a Benz motor sounds. A neon light wraps itself around the driver and the winter that beats in his heart. His heart stays cold. stays melting. ~ Gwen Calvo

Poetry and art are the breath of life to her. ~ Edith Wharton

I believe in reverencing anything in the life of man which has the testimony of the ages as being unexcelled, whether it be literature, paintings, poetry, tombs -- even a golf hole. ~ C.B. MacDonald

Come on cats, let's go.
Let's teach those old dog cheap trick beatniks some new kicks and bottle up and blow. ~ Harry Whitewolf

Their lifelong love of learning, their remarkable wide-ranging intellectual curiosity, was fostered primarily by their father. He read aloud to them at night, eliciting their responses to works of history and literature. He organized amateur plays for them, encourage pursuit of special interests, prompted them to write essays on their readings, and urge them to recite poetry. ~ Doris Kearns Goodwin

Today I bumped into you again. You seemed like that flower long forgotten in the old diary. ~ Avijeet Das

Writing becomes a form of protest against the incontestable ravages of time. The poet takes revenge on mortality, defeating cruelty and saving what she can by thinking the unthinkable and presiding over her own creation. The joy of writing stands against the bitter knowledge of just how much of the world cannot be controlled outside the work of art. This is the art of poetry trying to kill time. Probably ~ Edward Hirsch

The Christian gospel is rooted in langauge: God spoke a creation into being; our Savrior was the Word made flesh. The poet is the person who uses words not primarily to convey information but to make a relationship, shape beauty, form truth…

Isn't it odd that pastors, who are responsible for interpreting the Scriptures, so much of which come in the form of poetry, have so little interest in poetry? … Words create. God's word creates; our words can participate in creation." ~ Eugene H. Peterson

Do you remember the sight we saw, my soul,
that soft summer morning
round a turning in the path,
the disgusting carcass on a bed scattered with stones,
its legs in the air like a woman in need
burning its wedding poisons
like a fountain with its rhythmic sobs,
I could hear it clearly flowing with a long murmuring sound,
but I touch my body in vain to find the wound.
I am the vampire of my own heart,
one of the great outcasts condemned to eternal laughter
who can no longer smile.
Am I dead?
I must be dead. ~ Charles Baudelaire

The world is made up of too many girls wondering if they are pretty and too many boys too shy to tell them. ~ Atticus Poetry

Most people are trying to go digital, and trying to do different things with poetry. McSweeney's is going in the opposite direction - going more classic, and retro, which is all coming back. ~ Victoria Chang

No poetry that I'm aware of, however bad or glorious, has ever left somebody a worse person than they were before they read it. ~ Felix Dennis

If the poet spun for half an hour daily, his poetry would gain in richness. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Superstition is the poetry of life. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Time gives poetry to a battlefield... ~ Graham Greene

Drawing is a way of coming upon the connection between things, just like metaphor in poetry reconnects what has become separated. ~ John Berger

Some men call her cyanide
For she'll cause and take your pain.
To others she's the devil
Or the quest for true love's bane,
And, to those less lucky,
She's called their ball and chain. ~ Phar West Nagle

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotion know what it means to want to escape from these. ~ T. S. Eliot

Once upon a time
She tried so hard to fix him
And in the moment he was fixed
He simply left

She blossomed in the dirty pond
And still is a beautiful flower
She was drown
Trying to teach him how to swim ~ Jyoti Patel

Speaking of people I had to exclude: Hank Williams. which is to say, songs are part of lyric poetry in my book, my thinking. In fact they are the urgent element of poetry in our time, they carry the most emotion for the most people in our culture. everyone LOVES poetry, because we all love (one form or another) of rock and roll (be it folk to emo to rap). It's all rock and roll and all lyric poetry. ~ Gregory Orr

Love can be such a mysterious muse and seductress ... spinning her magical web of stardust and emotional euphoria.
True love sang her siren song and we wrapped that song around us like the sweetest melody. ~ Jaeda DeWalt

Sound is so important to creative writing. Think of the sounds you hear that you include and the similes you use to describe what things sound like. 'As she walked up the alley, her polyester workout pants sounded like windshield wipers swishing back and forth.' Cadence, onomatopoeia, the poetry of language are all so important. Learn all that you can about how to bring sound into your work. ~ Barbara DeMarco-Barrett

I don't like the word 'poetry,' and I don't like poetry readings, and I usually don't like poets. I would much prefer describing myself and what I do as: I'm kind of a curator, and I'm kind of a night-owl reporter. ~ Tom Waits

When I became poet laureate, I was in a slightly uncomfortable position because I think a lot of poetry isn't worth reading. ~ Billy Collins

What poetry does above all else is develop sensibility. And that's what makes poetry so dangerous. That's why poetry is so good at undermining governments and so bad at building them. There's nothing harder to organize than a group of poets. ~ Sam Hamill

Meditation is when you sit down, let's say that, and don't do anything. Poetry is when you get up and do something.
Somewhere we've developed the misconception that poetry is self-expression, and that meditation is going inward. Actually, poetry has nothing to do with self-expression, it is the way to be free, finally, of self-expression, to go much deeper than that. And meditation is not a form of thought or reflection, it is a looking at or an awareness of what is there, equally inside and outside, and then it doesn't make sense anymore to mention inside or outside. ~ Norman Fischer

Woman is the light of God. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi