Halcyon Poetry Quotes

Heart resides
where crumbling churches give way to blossoming trees
empty storefronts to towering mansions
it doesn't want just another heist movie
or an illusion of cleavage
it's not accidental or meaningless
it wants to be known ~ Brian D'Ambrosio

when you spend
all your time
imagining yourself
in other people's shoes,

your own story
goes unwritten,

& there is nothing
more painful
than that. ~ Amanda Lovelace

Don't scorn your life just because it's not dramatic, or it's impoverished, or it looks dull, or it's workaday. Don't scorn it. It is where poetry is taking place if you've got the sensitivity to see it, if your eyes are open.
Philip Levine, describing what he learned from William Carlos Williams, via NPR ~ Philip Levine

If you can't beat em: Poem. ~ David Rowe

We hear the saints saying: Our brother the world. We hear the revolutionaries: Dare we win? ~ Muriel Rukeyser

I'm going to become a beat poet and a lesbian! ~ Benjamin R. Smith

No holy place existed without us then,
no woodland, no dance, no sound.
Beyond all hope, I prayed those timeless
days we spent might be made twice as long.
I prayed one word: I want.
Someone, I tell you, will remember us,
even in another time. ~ Sappho

the flicker of a memory
is all we can cling to
for our cherished ghosts

From "Cat Paws on a Windscreen ~ J.S. Watts

A book on steam engine design lay next to one of poems by the poet laureate Tennyson. Lenore traced the poetry book's cover design. A finely made book with its gold-tooled leather and gilt-edged vellum pages. A beautiful book. An expensive one given to her by a man who'd likely spent three months' hard-earned wages to obtain it.

Lenore made a mournful sound in her throat. Nathaniel. She closed her eyes, remembering his ready smile and eyes as blue as bachelor's button. She thought of him every day, but lately, in the weeks following her father's death, he was constantly on her mind. ~ Grace Draven

Let love be the gravestone
Lying on my life. ~ Anna Akhmatova

You grew up, you were struck by lightning.
When you opened your eyes, you were wired forever to your true love.

It only happened once. Then you were taken care of,
your story was finished. ~ Louise Gluck

When I stand strong in you
I can look beyond the clouds
With your words
The sun will rise again ~ April Nichole

In all my work, in the movies I write, the lyrics, the poetry, the prose, the essays, I am saying that we may encounter many defeats - maybe it's imperative that we encounter the defeats - but we are much stronger than we appear to be and maybe much better than we allow ourselves to be. Human beings are more alike than unalike. ~ Maya Angelou

I finally went
where everyone goes
and I realized
I was
never
missing
out. ~ Meraaqi

You will fall with me as a stone in the grave ~ Pablo Neruda

Staying Power

And the greatest beauty you could clothe your body with
Are the gilded gems of staying power
Like traces of molten gold fusing through your cells
That which has the capacity to overcome, endure, persevere
And stay ever faithful to the soul beneath the person
To the spirit that cauterizes the flames
No matter what
And forever more ~ Christine Evangelou

women learn to sense who danger looks like just by catching another woman's eye from across a crowded room. ~ Amanda Lovelace

What is one man's hate speech is another man's poetry. ~ Flemming Rose

To me, poetry is about survival first of all. Survival of the individual self, survival of the emotional life. ~ Gregory Orr

I see poetry as a path toward new understanding and transformation, and so I've looked at specific poems I love, and at poetry's gestures in the broadest sense, in an effort to feel and learn what they offer from the inside. ~ Jane Hirshfield

High school was the first time I ever saw spoken word poetry. The first place I ever performed a poem was at my school, so in some ways it was the nucleus of how it all started. For me I think high school was a period of trying to figure myself out, and poetry was one of the ways I did that, and was a very helpful avenue to try to do that. ~ Phil Kay

I may turn out an intellectual, but I'll never write anything but mediocre poetry. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

I ask for nothing. / In return I give All. / There is no earning my Love. / No work needed, no effort / Save to listen to what is already heard, / To see what is already seen. / To know what is already known. / Do I seem to ask too little? / Would you give although I ask not? / Then this you can give me and I will accept. / I will take your heart. / You will find it waiting for you / When you return. ~ Ki Longfellow

So be we king
or be we bum
the reed still whistles
the heart still hums ~ Patti Smith

Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

Men We Reaped is a fiercely felt meditation on the value of life that at once reminds us of its infinite worth and indicts us - as a society - for our selective, casual complicity in devaluing it. Ward's account of these losses is founded in a compelling emotional honesty, and graced with moments of stark poetry. ~ Peter Ho Davies

Are his letters to Diana downstairs?"
She sighed. "What is it about girls and letters? My husband left me messages in soap on the bathroom mirror. Utterly impermanent.Really wonderful-" She broke off and scowled. I would have thought she looked a little embarrassed, but I didn't think embarrassment was in her repertoire. "Anyway. Most of the correspondence between the Willings is in private collections. He had their letters with him in Paris when he died. In a noble but ultimately misguided act, his attorney sent them to his neice. Who put them all in a ghastly book that she illustrated. Her son sold them to finance the publication of six even more ghastly books of poetry. I trust there is a circle of hell for terrible poets who desecrate art."
"I've seen the poetry books in the library," I told her. "The ones with Edward's paintings on the covers. I couldn't bring myself to read them."
"Smart girl. I suppose worse things have been done, but not many.Of course, there was that god-awful children's television show that made one of his landscapes move.They put kangaroos in it. Kangaroos. In eastern Pennsylvania."
"I've seen that,too," I admitted. I'd hated it. "Hated it.Not quite as much as the still life where Tastykakes replaced one orange with a cupcake, or the portrait of Diana dressed in a Playtex sports bra, but close."
"Oh,God. I try to forget about the bra." Dr. Rothaus shuddered. "Well, I suppose they do far worse to the really famous painters.P ~ Melissa Jensen

When the words have been said and the music has been played, feelings
are the only form of art which will remain to reign. ~ Soar

Who, except the poets, reads poetry? ~ Babette Deutsch

A poet's work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep. ~ Salman Rushdie

If Thou Must Love Me

If thou must love me, let it be for naught
Except for love's sake only. Do not say,
'I love her for her smile - her look - her way
Of speaking gently, - for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day' -
For these things in themselves, Belovèd, may
Be changed, or change for thee - and love, so wrought,
May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry:
A creature might forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!
But love me for love's sake, that evermore
Thou mayst love on, through love's eternity. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The man was poetry in motion. ~ Danielle Bourdon

I desired my dust to be mingled with yours
Forever and forever and forever. ~ Ezra Pound

And the answer is
not every building that shakes
will collapse.

The answer is
not everything that chips
will crumble. ~ Rudy Francisco

River burial had a certain rustic poetry, but Ophion cared not at all about preserving the decency of the dead. The river deposited Psaltery on a mud flat three kilometers downstream. When they passed her ruined body, the Titanides did not even glance at it. Chris could not look away. The corpse crawling with scavengers haunted his sleep for a long time. 28. ~ John Varley

A verbal art like poetry is reflective; it stops to think. Music is immediate, it goes on to become. ~ W. H. Auden