American Poetry Quotes

These words are my mother's,
my father's, my brother's, my lender's, my garbage
man's - the poem runs
like oil on fire
beneath this earth where we know each other.
Witness the black smoke everywhere. ~ B.J. Ward

POETRY HAS A PEPTIC PRESENCE. PRESENTLY. ~ Amy King

The next morning I had Twentieth-Century American Poetry at MCC. This old woman gave a lecture wherein she managed to talk for ninety minutes about Sylvia Plath without ever once quoting a single word of Sylvia Plath. ~ John Green

I wanted to shove her
away, thinking of my job, of headlines,
of how this kind of comfort was outside
the behavioral guidelines of my contract.
She began to sob more softly while holding me
tightly, and I let her. I let her have control
of me for that moment. I let her break
behavioral guidelines as more important ones
had been broken on her. And then we stopped
being student and teacher - just a couple people
at a loss when the powerful and unexpected
had been suddenly thrust upon us.
The principal and three students turned the corner
and stopped short. I knew it might be years
before I cleared my name, but far longer
for her to reclaim her life. ~ B.J. Ward

I think the best American poetry is the poetry that utilizes the resources of poetry rather than exploits the defects or triumphs of the poet's personality. ~ Mark Strand

American poetry has been part of a culture in conflict ... We are a people tending toward democracy at the level of hope; at another level, the economy of the nation, the empire of business within the republic, both include in their basic premise the idea of perpetual warfare ~ Muriel Rukeyser

You better ignore this.
You better staple your eyes shut
and put pot-lids over your ears
and pinch your nose with vice grips
and cement your mouth shut
with real cement and while
you're at it or in it or whatever
cut off your hands for good measure ~ B.J. Ward

I definitely wish to distinguish American poetry from British or other English language poetry. ~ Diane Wakoski

WORDS SHLD BE FREE. RELEASE THEM FROM THEIR SENTENCES. ~ Amy King

I close my eyes
Only for a moment,
then the moment's gone
All my dreams
Pass before my eyes, a curiosity...

Same old song
Just a drop of water in an endless sea
All we do
Crumbles to the ground,
though we refuse to see...

Now, don't hang on
Nothing lasts forever
but the earth and sky
It slips away
And all your money
won't another minute buy...

Dust in the wind
All we are is dust in the wind."

(Kansas guitarist Kerry Livgren wrote this after reading a book of Native American poetry. The line that caught his attention was "For All We Are Is Dust In The Wind.") ~ Kansas (band)

As hard as the diamonds in your smile,
the wind carries its hammers with no hands
and sustains a moan with no mouth,
seems to cradle solitude in its rough arms like firewood
to be burned in my house as it passes through
and asks, Where does she sparkle from? ~ B.J. Ward

As children we learned our shadow
is a darkness we never totally shake
until we lie down, pull the shades,
draw the curtains, shut out the world,
and turn our own light out. ~ B.J. Ward

The Ozarks are a fixture in my mindscape, but I didn't stay local in every respect. I always think of Miles Davis, "People who don't change end up like folk musicians playing in museums, local as a motherfucker." I wouldn't describe my attachment to home as ghostly, but long-distanced. My ear has been licked by many other tongues. ~ C.D. Wright

Tell this to ladies: how a hero man
Assail a thick and scandalous giant
Who casts true shadow in the sun,
And die, but play no truant.

This is more horrible: that the darling egg
Of the chosen people hatch a creature
Of noblest mind and powerful leg
Who cannot fathom nor perform his nature. ~ John Crowe Ransom

The trip to Mars can only be understood through Black Americans. I say, the trip to Mars can only be understood through Black Americans. ~ Nikki Giovanni

IT'S NOT THE HONEY WHISKEY IN A FRIDAY NIGHT - IT'S THE MANIC SHOW OF POETRY TWEETS THAT TURNS ME ON. ~ Amy King

Out in this profane city,
sometimes sidewalks
seem the only cement that connects us,
pressed by the sacred strangers
we will never touch. ~ B.J. Ward

We come from a country that has made a fetish if not a virtue out of proving it can live without art: high, low, old, new, fat, lean, and particularly the rarely visible nocturnal art of poetry.
We must do something with our time on this small aleatory sphere for motives other than money. Power is not an acceptable surrogate. ~ C.D. Wright

Nobody reads poetry, we are told at every inopportune moment. I read poetry. I am somebody. I am the people, too. It can be allowed that an industrious quantity of contemporary American poetry is consciously written for a hermetic constituency; the bulk is written for the bourgeoisie, leaving a lean cut for labor. Only the hermetically aimed has a snowball's chance in hell of reaching its intended ears. One proceeds from this realization. A staggering figure of vibrant, intelligent people can and do live without poetry, especially without the poetry of their time. This figure includes the unemployed, the rank and file, the union brass, banker, scientist, lawyer, doctor, architect, pilot, and priest. It also includes most academics, most of the faculty of the humanities, most allegedly literary editors and most allegedly literary critics. They do so--go forward in their lives, toward their great reward, in an engulfing absence of poetry--without being perceived or perceiving themselves as hobbled or deficient in any significant way. It is nearly true, though I am often reminded of a Transtromer broadside I saw in a crummy office building in San Francisco:



We got dressed and showed the house

You live well the visitor said

The slum must be inside you.



If I wanted to understand a culture, my own for instance, and if I thought such an understanding were the basis for a lifelong inquiry, I would turn to poetry fi ~ C.D. Wright

The judge sentenced us to life
real, awake life
out of the jails we had been roaming in
life in prism
then started handing out fines
for parking too long. ~ B.J. Ward

Shakespeare's felicity is so often taught
it is easy to overlook how taut
the sinews in his neck must
have been when he grasped his pen, or the musk
that exuded from the fat of his chin
below a somewhat chthonic grin
life wrestled death on his desk when he composed. ~ B.J. Ward

I don't think the creative writing industry has helped American poetry. ~ Robert Morgan

HER BARBED-WIRE SMILE
LIFTED YOU TO HEAVEN
BUT I HAVE TO ASK
DID GOD LOOK LIKE HER VOICE ~ Amy King

From ragbag, stumblebum, peripatetic lout
To bonfire of catnip that burns itself out
Bristled sack of hiss & claws
Cinched at the maw
~ B.J. Ward

I'd reconstruct Heaven, or usurp Hell
write till I swing open like a door hinge.
I arrive - a rogue who'd refurbish town.
I take my pen, begin to nail things down. ~ B.J. Ward

Listen, / my wary one, it's far too late / to unlove each other. ~ William Matthews

SOME PEOPLE SIMPLY DO NOT EXIST ANYMORE. GET USED TO IT. QUESTION MARK. ~ Amy King

DESPITE THE INVENTION OF TIME MACHINES, WE KEEP BEING LINEAR. ~ Amy King

POETRY SHAPES MY GENDER. ~ Amy King

It is not that complexity is overrated, but is is overcomplicated; it is not that obscurity is too obscure, it's that the underside grows grungy if it isn't exposed to the change of air;
it is not that the language is exhausted, it is that we run down; it's not that the edge won't cut anymore, it is that the cuts are getting thinner;
it's not that art is artificial, it is that the artists get outright seditty; it's not that literary reputations are not inevitable, it's that they are invented;
not that theories are not beautiful, but that they are feeble ~ C.D. Wright

I have written about some truly great writers - John Steinbeck, Robert Frost, and William Faulkner. Faulkner and Frost were the very peaks of American poetry and fiction in the 20th century. ~ Jay Parini

One day the English language is going to perish. The easy spokenness of it will perish and go black and crumbly - maybe - and it will become a language like Latin that learned people learn. And scholars will write studies of Larry Sanders and Friends and Will & Grace and Ellen and Designing Women and Mary Tyler Moore, and everyone will see that the sitcom is the great American art form. American poetry will perish with the language; the sitcoms, on the other hand, are new to human evolution and therefore will be less perishable. ~ Nicholson Baker

Now, you might think that because there are more poets than ever, there might be more opportunities for poets than ever. And you'd be correct. If your fondest wish is to become the next totally obscure minor poet on the block, well, you're probably already successful at that. This literary landscape has proven itself infinitely capable of absorbing countless interchangeable artists, all doing roughly the same thing in relative anonymity: just happily plucking away until death at the grindstone, making no great cultural headway, bouncing poems off their friends and an audience of about 40 people. A totally fine little life for an artist, to be sure. No grand expectations from the world to sit up and listen. One can live out one's days quite satisfied to create something enjoyed by a genial cult. But that's not why any of us are here tonight. We're here to conquer American Poetry and suck it dry of all glory and juice. ~ Jim Behrle

YOU SAY "POET" LIKE THAT MEANS SOMETHING. ~ Amy King

I teach a lecture course on American poetry to as many as 150 students. For a lot of them, it's their only elective, so this is their one shot. They'll take the Russian Novel or American Poetry, so I want to give them the high points, the inescapable poets. ~ Robert Hass

American poetry is always about defining oneself individually,claiming one's right to be different and often to break taboos. ~ Diane Wakoski

What I discerned in the U.S. was a convergence of poetic voices coming from many different rents in the social fabric, many cultures, many tributaries, which, together, make up the American poetry of the late twentieth century. ~ Adrienne Rich

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

STUFF POETS STILL LIKE: POETRY ~ Amy King

Twentieth-century American poetry has been one of the glories of modern literature. ~ Helen Vendler

Leads to Bear Down
Bear Down
gives way to little crown
Crown concedes the Head
then Head produces All
Snip the fruity cord
little King begins to bawl
then grows bored
So begins his fall
~ B.J. Ward

I still believe in this country, that it can fulfill the destiny Blake and Whitman envisioned. I still believe in American poetry. ~ Philip Levine

I WISH YOU ALL THE REALITY YOU COULD EVER WANT. HANDLE. WANT. ~ Amy King

American poetry, like American painting, is always personal with an emphasis on the individuality of the poet. ~ Diane Wakoski

In that house I built
a bonfire that illuminated
the fecund earth around it.
And in that split-level
my friend Tommy, only eight
teeth left in his whole head,
dug a huge illegal grave
to bury his father's packhorse.
He marched that sumpter
into the dark study
and shot its head on the left
so it would fall right.
That night, as if to argue
with the day,
Karen and I made love
on the front lawn of the mansion
one cul-de-sac down,
four feet away
from what would be
a window cracked
open to allow the outside
in. ~ B.J. Ward

She was the Judy Garland of American poetry. ~ James Dickey

THE AMPUTATED HEART
BEATS HARDER ~ Amy King

A man awakes every morning
and instead of reading the newspaper
reads Act V of Othello.
He sips his coffee and is content
that this is the news he needs
as his wife looks on helplessly. ~ B.J. Ward

Isn't it worth missing whatever joy / you might have dreamed, to wake in the night and find / you and your beloved are holding hands in your sleep? ~ Galway Kinnell

I would say that American poetry has always been a poetry of personal testimony. ~ Mark Strand

She fell in love with her doctor's stethoscope, the way it listened to her heart. ~ Russell Edson

Distinctly American poetry is usually written in the context of one's geographic landscape, sometimes out of one's cultural myths, and often with reference to gender and race or ethnic origins. ~ Diane Wakoski

This dark December day inspires him to write / the plainest things in the snow, then walk away. ~ Chard DeNiord

1
Cain lifts Crow, that heavy black bird
and strikes down Abel.

Damn, says Crow, I guess
this is just the beginning.

2
The white man, disguised
as a falcon, swoops in
and yet again steals a salmon
from Crow's talons.

Damn, says Crow, if I could swim
I would have fled this country years ago.

3
The Crow God as depicted
in all of the reliable Crow bibles
looks exactly like a Crow.

Damn, says Crow, this makes it
so much easier to worship myself.

4
Among the ashes of Jericho,
Crow sacrifices his firstborn son.

Damn, says Crow, a million nests
are soaked with blood.

5
When Crows fight Crows
the sky fills with beaks and talons.

Damn, says Crow, it's raining feathers.

6
Crow flies around the reservation
and collects empty beer bottles

but they are so heavy
he can only carry one at a time.

So, one by one, he returns them
but gets only five cents a bottle.

Damn, says Crow, redemption
is not easy.

7
Crow rides a pale horse
into a crowded powwow
but none of the Indian panic.

Damn, says Crow, I guess
they already live near the end of the world. ~ Sherman Alexie

Failing to fetch me at first, keep encouraged. Missing me one place, search another. I stop somewhere waiting for you. ~ Walt Whitman

Mandelstam is the sort of poet who comes along very, very rarely. Even the two Russian poets whose work is often linked with his - Anna Akhmatova and Marina Tsvetaeva - though their work is more "urgent" than most American poetry, seem to me to operate at a lesser charge than Mandelstam. ~ Christian Wiman

I was very interested in American poetry for many years. Much less now. ~ Norman MacCaig

YOUR WORDS ARE MADE OF THE AIR I BREATHE. ~ Amy King

Mr Rutger cornet de Groot. Never read any American poetry or any other foreign poetry, which is why he always mentions 2 poets as a reffering point, either Lucebert or Tonnus Oosterhoff. The guy started reading when he was 48 years old with a few library books and was turned instantly in one of the most important critics hired by the fund of literature. Oh well. ~ Martijn Benders

So Lightning says to Mud,
"What would happen if I struck your blood?"
And Mud says, "Brother,
It would hurt,
And make me the mother
Of every living thing.
But, Fire Boy, you ain't lifting my grass skirt
Until you burn me a ring. ~ Sherman Alexie

No matter how hard I try to forget you, you always come back to my thoughts
When you hear me singing I am really crying for you. ~ Jane Bierhorst

Colorado and Wyoming are America's highest states, averaging 6,800 feet and 6,700 feet above sea level. Utah comes in third at 6,100 feet, New Mexico, Nevada, and Idaho each break 5,000 feet, and the rest of the field is hardly worth mentioning. At 3,400 feet, Montana is only half as high as Colorado, and Alaska, despite having the highest peaks, is even further down the list at 1,900 feet. Colorado has more fourteeners than all the other U.S. states combined, and more than all of Canada too. Colorado's lowest point (3,315 feet along the Kansas border) is higher than the highest point in twenty other states. Rivers begin here and flow away to all the points of the compass. Colorado receives no rivers from another state (unless you count the Green River's' brief in and out from Utah).Wyoming's Wind River Range is the only mountain in North America that supplies water to all three master streams of the American West: Missouri, Colorado, and Columbia rivers. ~ Keith Meldahl

Nestled... In the dappled Spring sunlight
peeking through oaks, maples, and Tulip poplar
is a country house with pale-yellow siding.
Across a corner of the weathered,
wooden-slatted front porch, a vine lazily
stretches to find a spot in the sun. ~ Christina M. Ward

CALL YOURSELF

Look deep in the mirror
And say: 'I LOVE YOU'
And immediately
An electric current will
Ripple throughout your soul
And burst through your eyes
Like shooting stars
Dancing across the skies
In ecstasy.
To tell your soul you love it -
Is like remembering
WHO YOU ARE
After being in a coma
For a hundred years.
Your face will beam the light
Of a hundred galaxies. ~ Suzy Kassem

American traditions and the American ethic require us to be truthful, but the most important reason is that truth is the best propaganda and lies are the worst. To be persuasive we must be believable; to be believable we must be credible; to be credible we must be truthful. It is as simple as that. ~ Edward R. Murrow

If our freedom is taken, the American dream will wither and die. ~ Rand Paul

Mention the name George W. Bush in mixed company, and you're likely to spark a lot of debate and emotion - hot and cold, good and bad. Not a lot of neutral reaction. He was elected in the most controversial contest in American electoral history and governed during one of the most tumultuous decades. ~ Mark McKinnon

Come close - let our hearts beat like one,
we'll be the two that became one.
Love is the rhythm of our night. ~ J.WOLF

Throughout American history, the racial imperialism of whites has supported the custom of scholars using the term "women" even if they are referring solely to the experience of white women. ~ Bell Hooks

We've had characters like Trump in American politics forever, characters who trade on xenophobia. ~ Lin-Manuel Miranda

Joseph McCarthy, the Junior Republican Senator from Wisconsin, ruled America like devil king for four years. His purges were an American mirror image of Stalin's purges, an unnoticed similarity. ~ Martha Gellhorn

I think no matter how snarky you try to be, poetry will always find a way to make a spiritual goal out of what you're doing. ~ Mike Young

The Jacksonians were not monetary nationalists; specie was specie, and they saw no reason that foreign gold or silver coins should not circulate with the same full privileges as American-minted coins. ~ Murray Rothbard

Conflict with the United States is one of the overwhelming facts of Latin American history. ~ Stephen Kinzer

The American people can have anything they want; the trouble is, they don't know what they want. ~ Eugene V. Debs

For darkness restores what light cannot repair. ~ Joseph Brodsky

History is the new poetry. ~ Thomas Carlyle

I think I can sing, but that does not mean I can actually sing. I fear that I'm like one of those 'American Idol' contestants who truly believe they are good and are actually dreadful. ~ Kenneth Choi

One recent study performed by the American Medical Association and published in the _Archives of Internal Medicine_ in January 2012 demonstrated an astounding 48 percent increased risk of diabetes among women taking statin medications.

This study involved big numbers -- more than one hundred sixty thousand postmenopausal women -- making it hard to ignore its significance and gravity. Recognizing that type 2 diabetes is a powerful risk factor for Alzheimer's disease, a relationship between statin drugs and cognitive decline or cognitive dysfunction is certainly understandable.
~ David Perlmutter, M.D., _Grain Brain_ ~ David Perlmutter

You know, I began my life as a creative person writing true things for magazines and telling some very honest, straightforward personal essaying for This American Life, but until someone forces you, with a deadline, to really observe your life - unless you're motivated to do it yourself - there's so many stories that you miss. ~ John Hodgman

The Lord was pleased to strengthen us, and remove all fear from us, and disposed our hearts to be as useful as possible. ~ Richard Allen

We have now an American political party and a European one. Not all Americans who vote for the European party want to become Europeans. But it doesn't matter because that's what they're voting for. They're voting for dependency, for lack of ambition, and for insolvency. ~ Harvey Mansfield

I get most my information about what's happening in the United States from reports and studies, which are often in conflict with what you read on the editorial pages, or handouts from right wing institutions like the American Enterprise Institute. ~ Ishmael Reed

My heart aches for you! But don't despair! I am persuaded you will come about! Recollect what the poet says! I'm not sure which poet, but very likely it was Shakespeare, because it generally is, though why I can't imagine! ~ Georgette Heyer

God, as some cynic has said, is always on the side which has the best football coach. ~ Heywood Broun

I wait on my fix:
I am a poetry junkie. ~ Charles Bukowski

My veins do not end in me but in the unanimous blood of those who struggle for life, love, things, landscape and bread, the poetry of all. ~ Roque Dalton

And at the closing of the day
She loosed the chain, and down she lay;
The broad stream bore her far away,
The Lady of Shallot. ~ Alfred Tennyson

You do not know how much they mean to me, my friends,
And how, how rare and strange it is, to find
In a life composed so much, so much of odds and ends,
(For indeed I do not love it ... you knew? you are not blind! How keen you are!)
To find a friend who has these qualities,
Who has, and gives
Those qualities upon which friendship lives.
How much it means that I say this to you-
Without these friendships-life, what cauchemar! ~ T. S. Eliot

Love is almost never simple. ~ Dejan Stojanovic

On all levels American society is rigged. I am troubled by the cynical immorality of my country. It cannot survive on this basis. ~ John Steinbeck

What would it mean if there were a theory that explained everything? And just what does "everything" actually mean, anyway? Would this new theory in physics explain, say the meaning of human poetry? Or how economics work? Or the stages of psychosexual development? Can this new physics explain the currents of ecosystems, or the dynamics of history, or why human wars are so terribly common? ~ Ken Wilber

I seek the spread of freedom and democracy in the way that satisfies God. [Americans] have planned and paved the ways for a long time, but it is God who is the real planner
and the proof of this is the fall of the American twin towers[ ... ]a miracle from God. ~ Muqtada Al Sadr

The establishment of an American Soviet government will involve the confiscation of large landed estates in town and country, and also, the whole body of forests, mineral deposits, lakes, rivers and so on. ~ William Z. Foster

Keep your whole being on the thing you are turning into words. The minute you flinch, and take your mind off this thing, and begin to look at the words and worry about them... Then your worry goes into them and they set about killing each other. So you keep going as long as you can, then look back and see what you have written. After a bit of practice and after telling yourself you are going to use any old word that comes into your head so long as it seems right, you will surprise yourself. You will read back through what you have written and you will get a shock. You will have captured a spirit, a creature. ~ Ted Hughes

Note for a Textbook

The question is never answered, never resolved,
The circle of love and anger never squared,
The stubborn instinct not translated yet
In decimals, accurate and predictable
In union dues or payroll cuts or blood...

Always a symbol lost in the lovely theorem,
A fraction that will not fit in the sum of the system,
A jutting thrust in the graph of the commissar's forecast,
A troublesome blank in gauleiter's careful accounting,
An awkward hitch in the plans of the second vice-president.

The answers worked on the slate are never the same,
And the answers proved in the back of the book are wrong. ~ Charles Bruce

A rebel to what's cool, I don't follow trends, maybe that's why I don't have many friends, but I know my destination. ~ Delano Johnson