American Poets Quotes

American poets celebrate their bodies, very specifically, as Whitman did. ~ Diane Wakoski

In other words, if Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy showed more than their fair share of pathology it was due less to the requirements of their creative work than to the personal sufferings caused by the unhealthy conditions of a Russian society nearing collapse. If so many American poets and playwrights committed suicide or ended up addicted to drugs and alcohol it was not their creativity that did it but an artistic scene that promised much, gave few rewards and left nine out of ten artists neglected if not ignored. ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Powell belongs, in fact to the first generation of American poets who may have grown up without even a vestigial connection to the accentual-syllabic, rhyming English tradition - his inventive lines have this absence at their back. ~ Stephen Burt

I wonder what it means about American literary culture and its transmission when I consider the number of American poets who earn their living teaching creative writing in universities. I've ended up doing that myself. ~ Marilyn Hacker

You are the beautiful half
of a golden hurt. ~ Gwendolyn Brooks

In pursuing certain virtues - colorful local effects, personae and personality, juxtaposition, close calls with nonsense, uncertainty, critiques of ordinary language - the current crop of American poets necessarily give up on others. ~ Stephen Burt

You don't read a poem to find the meaning of life. The opposite. I mean, you'd be foolish to. Now, some American poets present the reader with a slice of life, saying, I went to the store today, and I saw a man, and he looked at me, and I looked at him, and we both knew we were ... thieves. And aren't we all thieves? You know, this is extracting from everyday experience a statement about life, or a moral. ~ Mark Strand

The most important American love poet in living memory, and certainly one of the most important American poets tout court, Robert Creeley was born in 1926 and raised in eastern Massachusetts. ~ Susan Stewart

I defer to all these other American poets who, for some reason, I both envy and admire. ~ Charles Olson

I think a lot of American poets are swimming-pool Soviets. A lot of them have taken the comfortable, self-protective route too often. I know that I certainly have. That's easy to do. ~ Sam Hamill

Most of these American poets pushing and hustling their talents playing at greatness. poet (?): that word needs re- defining. when I hear that word I get a rising in the gut as if I were about to puke. let them have the stage so long as I need not be in the audience. ~ Charles Bukowski

Too many poets act like a middle-aged mother trying to get her kids to eat too much cooked meat, and potatoes with drippings (tears). I don't give a damn whether they eat or not. Forced feeding leads to excessive thinness (effete). Nobody should experience anything they don't need to, if they don't need poetry bully for them. I like the movies too. And after all, only Whitman and Crane and Williams, of the American poets, are better than the movies. ~ Frank O'Hara

Somehow, the greater the public opposition to the health care bill, the more determined they seem to force it on us anyway. Their attitude shows Washington at its very worst - the presumption that they know best, and they're going to get their way whether the American people like it or not. ~ Scott Brown

Love, according to our contemporary poets, is a privilege which two beings confer upon one another, whereby they may mutually cause one another much sorrow over absolutely nothing. ~ Honore De Balzac

The simple truth is that balding African-American men look cool when they shave their heads, whereas balding white men look like giant thumbs. ~ Dave Barry

My goal is to make as many films as possible about different aspects of American life. ~ Frederick Wiseman

The American people expect more from Congress. They expect fiscal responsibility and common sense. They expect us to return to the pay-as-you-go budget rules that we had enacted in the past that helped us establish a surplus, however briefly. ~ Melissa Bean

Will his work survive? Alas, I worry that it will not. As an American liberal with impeccable credentials, I would like to say that political correctness is going to kill American liberalism if it is not fought to the death by people like me for the dangers it represents to free speech, to the exchange of ideas, to openheartedness, or to the spirit of art itself. Political correctness has a stranglehold on academia, on feminism, and on the media. It is a form of both madness and maggotry, and has already silenced the voices of writers like James Dicky across the land. ~ Pat Conroy

Of course, Mr. Hannity was outraged that any American would not cross her hand over her heart and repeat the hypocritical words, one nation. Whenever we come up on the Fourth of You Lie, I think of Frederick Douglas and his masterful oration, The meaning of the Fourth of July to the Negro. Pledge the flag? I think not! ~ Julianne Malveaux

My grandmothers are Irish-American and German-American; my grandfather is from the Caribbean. My father is African-American. My family looked funny. I just started naturally imitating whoever I was talking to. I didn't want to be a phony, but I felt very authentic in the moment. ~ Sarah Jones

Nature never set forth the earth in so rich tapestry as divers poets have done; neither with pleasant rivers, fruitful trees, sweet-smelling flowers, nor whatsoever else may make the too-much-loved earth more lovely; her world is brazen, the poets only deliver a golden. ~ Philip Sidney

It's one thing to be young, cherub-faced, straight woman doing and saying things that make people uncomfortable. It's quite another – and far riskier – to do those same things in a body that is not white, straight, not slender, not young, or not American. ~ Anne Helen Petersen

We were from totally different social backgrounds. This is what is very hard for an American to understand, but we could have been five guys from Mars. ~ Bill Bruford

The big lie of American capitalism is that corporations work in their own best interests. In fact they're constantly doing things that will eventually bring them to their knees. Most of these blunders involve toxic chemicals that any competent chemist should know to be dangerous. They pump these things into the environment and don't even try to protect themselves. The evidence is right there in public, almost as if they'd printed up signed confessions and sprinkled them out of aeroplanes. Sooner or later, someone shows up in a Zodiac and points to that evidence, and the result is devastation far worse than what a terrorist, a Boone, could manage with bombs and guns. All the old men within twenty miles who have come down with tumors become implacable enemies. All the women married to them, all the mothers of damaged children, and even those of undamaged ones. The politicians and the news media trample each other in their haste to pour hellfire down on that corporation. The transformation can happen overnight and it's easy to bring about. You just have to show up and point your finger. ~ Neal Stephenson

You convey too great a compliment when you say that I have earned the right to the presidential nomination. No man can establish such an obligation upon any part of the American people. My country owes me no debt. It gave me, as it gives every boy and girl, a chance. It gave me schooling, independence of action, opportunity for service and honor. In no other land could a boy from a country village, without inheritance or influential friends, look forward with unbounded hope. My whole life has taught me what America means. I am indebted to my country beyond any human power to repay. ~ Herbert Hoover

We all tell our own stories the way we live our lives. My story is: Life is too short to not believe in fresh voices. I don't have Hollywood stars. I have great American artists. ~ Kevin McCollum

Of all evil-doers, the American is most to be feared; he uses more ingenuity in the planning of his projects, and will take greater risks in carrying them out, than any other malefactor on earth. ~ Robert Barr

When you watch the first 'American Pie' movie, you're like ... 'I know that jock who's kind of sweet and has a girlfriend, and I know that weird off-beat kid.' ~ Hayden Schlossberg

Your grandparents are English?"
"Grandfather is,but Grandmere is French. And my other grandparents are American,of course."
"Wow.You really are a mutt."
St. Clair smiles. "I'm told I take after my English grandfather the most, but it's only because of the accent."
"I don't know.I think of you as more English than anything else.And you don't just sound like it,you look like it,too."
"I do?" He surprised.
I smile. "Yeah,it's that...pasty complexion. I mean it in the best possible way," I add,at his alarmed expression. "Honestly."
"Huh." St. Clair looks at me sideways. "Anyway.Last summer I couldn't bear to face my father, so it was the first time I spent the whole holiday with me mum."
"And how was it? I bet the girls don't tease you about your accent anymore."
He laughs. "No,they don't.But I can't help my height.I'll always be short."
"And I'll always be a freak,just like my dad. Everyone tells me I take after him.He's sort of...neat,like me."
He seems genuinely surprised. "What's wrong with being neat? I wish I were more organized.And,Anna,I've never met your father,but I guarantee you that you're nothing like him."
"How would you know?"
"Well,for one thing,he looks like a Ken doll.And you're beautiful."
I trip and fall down on the sidewalk.
"Are you all right?" His eyes fill with worry.
I look away as he takes my hand and helps me up. "I'm fine.Fine!" I say, brushing the grit from my palms. Oh my ~ Stephanie Perkins

The right to choose to abort a fetus is critical, as is the ability to effect that choice in real life, so it's great that Hillary Clinton wants to repeal the Hyde Amendment. But without welfare, single-payer health care, a minimum wage of at least $15--all policies she staunchly opposes--many people have to forgo babies they'd really love to have. That's not really a choice.

It seems ill-conceived to have tethered feminism to such a narrow issue as abortion. Yet it makes sense from an insular Beltway fundraising perspective to focus on an issue that makes no demands--the opposite, really--of the oligarch class; this is probably a big reason why EMILY'S List has never dabbled in backing universal pre-K or paid maternity leave; a major reason 'reproductive choice' has such a narrow and negative definition in the American political discourse.

The thing is, an abortion is by definition a story you want to forget, not repeat and relive. And for the same reason abortion pills will never be the blockbuster moneymakers heartburn medications are, abortion is a consummately foolish thing to attempt to build a political movement around. It happens once or twice in a woman's lifetime.

Kids, on the other hand, are with you forever. A more promising movement--one that goes against everything Hillary Clinton stands for--might take that to heart. ~ Liza Featherstone

Kirsty born in Knightsbridge Infirmary London, the same hospital that a famous American Rock Hero had died in 20 years before. ~ Darragh J Brady

I think it's healthy to say that the American people now have direct access and that we have sufficient confidence as people in our own ability to judge, to make intelligent decisions. ~ Kathleen Hall Jamieson

Working on 'Fresh Off the Boat' has been really enlightening to me because it's made me actually think about the roles that Asians and Asian-American women have played in media. Not because I didn't think it was important before, but because before, I was really focused on just paying my rent. ~ Constance Wu

If you loose the sounds comming out of New Orleans, you loose apart of the american language. ~ Ty Pennington

I was asked by an editor to consider writing something about an American inventor. I asked him if he knew who invented the computer. He said he didn't. In that case, I told him, I should write a book about John Vincent Atanasoff. ~ Jane Smiley

You know when I first thought I might have a chance? When I realized that you could go into any bar in the country and insult Lyndon Johnson and nobody would punch you in the nose. ~ Eugene McCarthy

If you have time to chatter,
Read books.
If you have time to read,
Walk into mountain, desert and ocean.
If you have time to walk,
Sing songs and dance.
If you have time to dance,
Sit quietly, you happy, lucky idiot. ~ Nanao Sakaki

Like the grasses showing tender faces to each other, thus should we do, for this was the wish of the Grandfathers of the World. ~ Black Elk

It seems to me that the American popular song, growing out of American folk music, is the basis of the American musical theater ... it is quite legitimate to use the form of the popular song and gradually fill it out with new musical content. ~ Kurt Weill

Exploiting the stupidity of the American voter is fun and easy: kinda like squeezing a lemon. ~ Jonathan Gruber

I think everybody out there on the American team is out of their element. That's not an excuse. That's the way it is. It's early in the spring. A lot of guys are not as (locked-in) as they could be. ~ Mark Teixeira

The spring of 1942 was given over to a very impassioned, strategic debate about where we should first attack in counterpunching against the Germans and Italians. The British argued very persuasively on the part of Winston Churchill, prime minister, that this was a very green American Army, green soldiers, green commanders. ~ Rick Atkinson

I always thought of myself as more American than Americans when I was living in Germany, because I always had this attitude of can-do, and if you're successful, you can show it, which is a very un-German thing, you know. ~ Kim Dotcom

When George W. Bush decided to save the American position in Iraq by going against the advice of all of his wise men, of Jim Baker and the whole Iraq Study Group, and 90% of his administration, that was George W. Bush's decision. So we have to bear in mind that this isn't an administration we're electing. It's a person that we are electing. ~ Bret Stephens

Hip hop culture has done more for race relations in American than anything since Martin Luther King. And I really believe that. ~ Steve Stoute

I want American Dream growth - lots of new businesses, well-paying jobs, and American leadership in new industries, like clean energy and biotechnology. ~ William J. Clinton

Contrary to the writings of some historians, Monroe's proclamation was entirely his own creation-not Adam's. The assertion that Adams authored the "Monroe Doctrine" is not only untrue, it borders on the ludicrous by implying that President Monroe was little more than a puppet manipulated by another's hand. Such assertions show little insight into the presidency itself and the type of man who aspires to and assumes that office; indeed, they denigrate the character, the intellect, the intensity and the sense of power that drive American presidents. ~ Harlow Giles Unger

Maybe the example of Southern fiction writing has been so powerful that Southern poets have sort of keyed themselves to that. ~ Robert Morgan

Holy books are an insult to a God with good intentions. ~ Dejan Stojanovic

The presidency is the most visible thread that runs through the tapestry of the American government. More often than not, for good or for ill, it sets the tone for the other branches and spurs the expectations of the people. ~ Mike Pence

Israel has always been pro-American. Israel will always be pro-American. ~ Benjamin Netanyahu

I think we can be reasonably confident that if the American population had the slightest idea of what is being done in their name, they would be utterly appalled. ~ Noam Chomsky

That's not my concern just now. This man - " "Grayson Thane," Brianna supplied, more than grateful the topic had turned away from their mother. "A respected American author who has designs on a quiet room in a well-run establishment in the west of Ireland. He doesn't have designs on his landlady." She picked up her tea, sipped. "And he's going to pay for my greenhouse. ~ Nora Roberts

That's not a grenade, is it?" Christabel whispered.
"Probably," I whispered back. "The have this awesome storage room full of cool stuff like that."
"Grenades are cool?" She looked dubious.
"Cooler than dead poets," I teased.
"Hey," both she and Logan said at the same time. ~ Alyxandra Harvey

I still remember 1997 when I made the movie 'Storm Riders;' that moment, a lot of American producers want to hire me to make movies in the States. ~ Andrew Lau

My prose can be dense. I love to pile on detail. I love to describe. I'm much more reluctant to give the reader entrance into a character's feeling than describe what's around him or her and have the reader intuit the internal life of a character. I know that's demanding, so this was a gesture of friendliness, maybe. It's like I'm saying to the reader, I know this is going to be more lyrical than maybe 70 percent of American readers want to see, but here's a bunch of white space for you to recover from that lyricism. ~ Anthony Doerr