Contemporary Poetry Quotes

I've changed, you've changed
We've become something more than what was hoped for or foreseen ~ Tiffany Fulton

I called it a baptism in flaming ink that forced me to shed my shyness about recognizing myself as a poet and to accept the fact that life had never given me any choice in the matter. And then I had to discover exactly what that meant. ~ Aberjhani

Contemporary poetry is a kind of Reykjavik, a place where accessibility and intelligence have been fighting a Cold War by proxy for the last half-century. ~ Nick Hornby

Contemporary poetry ... tries to transform the sign back into meaning:
its ideal, ultimately, would be to reach not the meaning of words, but the
meaning of things themselves. This is why it clouds the language, increases
as much as it can the abstractness of the concept and the arbitrariness
of the sign and stretches to the limit the link between signifier and signified. ~ Roland Barthes

Painted desert, ocean of color
sun's worshiper, moon's lover
picture of a coyote's voice
sandbox of angels, another toy. ~ Trine Daely

Amelia

It was just a Morris Mini
Made in 1959
It was old and rather tatty
But what mattered, it was mine
But it wasn't just a motor car
It meant the world to me
It gave me liberation
'Twas the thing that set me free
I felt the need to name it
And then "Millie" came to mind
Back then it was a grannie's name
The oddest I could find
Amelia was christened
And it seemed to suit her well
The only car that had a name
As far as I could tell
I simply drove it everywhere
And it never missed a beat
Despite her ragged edges
She would not admit defeat
But slowly I grew older
And I felt the need for more
And Millie lost her lustre
She just wasn't like before
My wife now has a Mini
That is more than twice as fast
But it's somehow lost the magic
Of that old one of the past
The one thing I insist on
That will always be the same
Yes, I'm sure you've guessed it
It has got the same old name. ~ Robbie Franklin

Jack and John

Jack Spratt was much too fat
John Spratt was far too lean
And so between the two of them
They made a dreadful scene.
Jack Spratt got stuck inside the door
While John fell down a drain
And what with all the noise they made
The neighbours did complain. ~ Bernie Morris

The techniques of contemporary poetry are probably the techniques of your daily life. I don't know a single person who goes into the grocery store and thinks in complete sentences. We often think in fragments, we think in little lists, we think in non-sequiturs, we think in feelings that may not match up with each other. ~ Brenda Hillman

A book is sent out into the world, and there is no way of fully anticipating the responses it will elicit. Consider the responses called forth by the Bible, Homer, Shakespeare - let alone contemporary poetry or a modern novel. ~ Chaim Potok

Like contemporary poetry , philosophy is one of those things, especially at the beginning stages, most people would rather do than study which is why most of what gets done is so impoverished. ~ Samuel R. Delany

Modern poetry, for me, began not in English at all but in Spanish, in the poems of Lorca. ~ W.S. Merwin

Anyway I read more contemporary poetry than contemporary fiction so my mind goes first to a kind of crass "conceptualism" that repeats vanguard gestures of the past minus the politics and historical context. ~ Ben Lerner

I love contemporary poetry because it moves between what we call poetry and what we call philosophy. It joins these fields and makes writing more natural, as in how it is lived in the person. We don't separate thinking from feeling in real life, so why should we separate it in writing? ~ Etel Adnan

Astro Types

Aries is the forward type
He doesn't lose his head
Except when charging headlong in
Where "Angels fear to tread".

Taurus has a pretty face
And likes her comfort best.
She'll eat you out of house and home
Then take the longest rest. ~ Bernie Morris, Colleen Thatcher

her grass seemed
greener until
a drought came
and cracked the earth
beneath you. ~ K.Y. Robinson

This fellow is wise enough to play the fool;
And to do that well craves a kind of wit:
He must observe their mood on whom he jests,
The quality of persons, and the time,
And, like the haggard, check at every feather
That comes before his eye. This is a practise
As full of labour as a wise man's art
For folly that he wisely shows is fit;
But wise men, folly-fall'n, quite taint their wit. ~ William Shakespeare

The poems that used to entrance me in the days of Miss Violence now struck me as overdone and sickly. Alas, burthen, thine, cometh, aweary - the archaic language of unrequited love. I was irritated with such words, which rendered the unhappy lovers - I could now see - faintly ridiculous, like poor moping Miss Violence herself. Soft-edged, blurry, soggy, like a bun fallen into the water. Nothing you'd want to touch, ~ Margaret Atwood

No Child of Yours

I saw a child hide in the corner
So I went and asked her name
She was so naive and so petite
With such a tiny frame.

'No one,' she replied, that's what I am called
I have no family, no one at all
I eat, I sleep, I get depressed
There is no life, I have nothing left.'

'Why hide in the corner?' I had to ask twice
Because I've been hurt, it not very nice
I tried to stop it, it was out of my control
I feared for myself I wanted to go.

I begged for my sorrow to disappear
I turned in my bed, oh God, I knew they were near
'So come on little girl, where do you go
A path ahead, or a path to unknown?'

With that she arose, her head hung low
She held herself for only she knows
Her tears held back, her heart like ice
It looks as though she has paid the price.

The ice started melting, her tears to flow
The memories flood back, still so many years to go
The pain, the anger all built up inside
Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.

It will get better, just wait and see
You'll get a life, though you'll never be fire
Open your heart and love yourself
The abuse you suffered was NOT your fault. ~ Teresa Cooper

Reading great works of literature, discovering poetry, and listening to the best composers are all ways that we learn to love the Creator more. ~ Jennifer A. Marshall

{...]I began to feel tears of frustration build up in my eyes, yearning to free themselves from their glandular prisons. ~ Andrea Bouchaud

Even the people who have had success and made money writing these books of fiction seem to feel the need to pretend it's no big deal, or part of a natural progression from poetry to fiction, but often it's really just about the money, the perceived prestige. ~ George Murray

The funny thing
about
advice is,
we always tell
others
the things
we
cannot
really do
ourselves. ~ Robert M. Drake

How does a person exist after their world has been torn to pieces? It must be possible. People do it all the time. After all the floods and tornadoes and wars that have hit the world with inexorable violence, people somehow scrape up their lives and begin again. ~ R.L. Martinez

In the ancients, one sees the accomplished letter of entire poetry: in the moderns, one has the presentiment of the spirit in becoming. ~ Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

According to tradition, the originator of Taoism, Lao-tzu, was an older contemporary of Kung Fu-tzu, or Confucius, who died in 479 B.C.1 Lao-tzu is said to have been the author of the Tao Te Ching, a short book of aphorisms, setting forth the principles of the Tao and its power or virtue (Te e). But traditional Chinese philosophy ascribes both Taoism and Confucianism to a still earlier source, to a work which lies at the very foundation of Chinese thought and culture, dating anywhere from 3000 to 1200 B.C. This is the I Ching, or Book of Changes. ~ Alan W. Watts

Now what mattered to me no longer matters. ~ Gabriela Mistral

You are what you are, because of, or in spite of past experiences ~ Anonymous

The pen, a double-edged mystery: cuts the writer, heals the reader. ~ Jenim Dibie

I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled poets to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean. ~ Socrates

This autumn-
why am I growing old?
bird disappearing among clouds. ~ Matsuo Basho

The Bible is full of interest. It has noble poetry in it; and some clever fables; and some blood-drenched history; and some good morals; and a wealth of obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies. This Bible is built mainly out of fragments of older Bibles that had their day and crumbled to ruin. So it noticeably lacks in originality, necessarily. Its three or four most imposing and impressive events all happened in earlier Bibles; there are only two new things in it: hell, for one, and that singular heaven I have told you about. ~ Mark Twain

The contemporary historian never writes such a true history as the historian of a later generation. ~ Agatha Christie

To have ruined one's self over poetry is an honour. ~ Oscar Wilde

Characters should be interchangeable as between one book and another. The entire corpus of existing literature should be regarded as a limbo from which discerning authors could draw their characters as required, creating only when they failed to find a suitable existing puppet. The modern novel should be largely a work of reference. Most authors spend their time saying what has been said before – usually said much better. A wealth of references to existing works would acquaint the reader instantaneously with the nature of each character, would obviate tiresome explanations and would effectively preclude mountebanks, upstarts, thimble-riggers and persons of inferior education from an understanding of contemporary literature. ~ Flann O'Brien

You disappoint me -I am the worst liar in the world - I can't hide my pain or my need so I make a bouquet of my sorrows and give them to you ... ~ John Geddes

He was just drifting off when he heard her soft whisper. "Cooper?"
"Still here." Maybe she'd changed her mind about the sheet. The thought made his body twitch. Yeah, she was going to toss that damn thing aside and roll toward him. She'd wrap that hot little bod tight to his, and he'd
"Thank you." Breanne said very quietly.
He blinked. "Thank you? He slid his hand down to cup himself. Still hard. Nope, he hadn't missed anything ... ~ Jill Shalvis

Love speaks to
The soul
In a language
The brain
Can't comprehend. ~ Chris Mc Geown

I am five, I will never understand
why we are stranded in our selves
but in this moment I know
my own story
is understanding our singleness
that I am destined to move my body and time
into the body-time
the story
of Others. ~ Sharon Doubiago

Unlike Ronan, Adam's Aglionby jumper was second-hand, but he'd taken great care to be certain it was impeccable. He was slim and tall, with dusty hair unevenly cropped above a fine-boned, tanned face. He was a sepia photograph. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

The most destructive instruments can still create a melody worth dancing to. ~ Rudy Francisco

The exceeding brightness of this early sun
Makes me conceive how dark I have become. ~ Wallace Stevens

I want you alone," he whispered, gliding a hand around her hip, "on a slow boat to China. Days together, nights ... rocking on the waves. ~ Ophelia London

Traveling down a road of self-destruction
With no room for any reconstruction ~ Jessica-Lynn Barbour

And if the world has forgotten you,
say this to the stable earth: I run.
Tell the rushing water: I exist. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Far too many young people coming of age today have no spiritual or emotional roots. They have been deprived of values by an agnostic and contemporary culture. ~ Billy Graham