Micro Poetry Quotes

It is the curse of the competent―not to be called upon. ~ Robert Priest

If I'm very drunk, I can improvise. But generally speaking, no. Generally speaking, almost all of my work is material that was first done on the printed page. And the shorter ones that you might call poems, I had a stretch from '79, '80, for five or six years, where I wrote a lot of poetry as such. Simply because I was asked to. ~ Richard Meltzer

Religion is poetry, - poetry is religion. ~ Marie Corelli

Engineering, like poetry, is an attempt to approach perfection. And engineers, like poets, are seldom completely satisfied with their creations. They notice, even if no one else does, the world that is not quite le mot juste, or the hairline crack that blemishes the structure. ~ Henry Petroski

We aren't suggesting that mental instability or unhappiness makes one a better poet, or a poet at all; and contrary to the romantic notion of the artist suffering for his or her work, we think these writers achieved brilliance in spite of their suffering, not because of it. ~ Dorianne Laux

Ah, love, this is fear. This is fear and syllables
and the beginnings of beauty. ~ Robert Hass

There is no difference:
Love is love and love is love.
We are all the same. ~ Tyler Knott Gregson

I have heard that hysterical women say
They are sick of the palette and fiddle-bow,
Of poets that are always gay ~ William Butler Yeats

A word only writes
Its night and rides
Its dream. ~ Dejan Stojanovic

Uh-oh," Will muttered. "This is going to be ... interesting."
It turned out the creative genius behind the movie was Will's dad - the god Apollo, which meant this was not going to be a typical orientation flick. No, as we soon found out, Apollo had written, directed, produced, hosted and starred in ... a variety show.
For those of you who don't know what a variety show is, imagine a talent show on steroids, complete with canned laughter, pre-recorded applause, and an extra-large helping of hokeyness. For the next hour, we cringe-watched as Apollo and our demigod predecessors performed in song-and-dance numbers, recited poetry, acted in comedy sketches and harmonized in a musical group called the Lyre Choir. Naturally, Apollo featured prominently in most of the acts. The one of him hula-hooping shirtless while satyrs capered around with long rainbow ribbons on sticks ... you can't unsee that kind of thing. ~ Rick Riordan

What a conception of art must those theorists have who exclude portraits from the proper province of the fine arts! It is exactly as if we denied that to be poetry in which the poet celebrates the woman he really loves. Portraiture is the basis and the touchstone of historic painting. ~ August Wilhelm Von Schlegel

It isn't always easy to tolerate poetry; it can take a person in unexpected directions. I was given wings, but where is the air in which to fly? ~ Jon Kalman Stefansson

We are against war and the sources of war.
We are for poetry and the sources of poetry. ~ Muriel Rukeyser

All the modern verse plays, they're terrible; they're mostly about the poetry. It's more important that the play is first. ~ Denis Johnson

Bullshit is as common as lame poetry and more unavoidable than
those armed men who are there to protect you from
Bullshit like this is straight from the lab and god loves you and
the government doesn't want war and it's the best movie since
Repo Man and if i stopped drinking the world might end anyway
and breathanarianism and immortality for anything besides

Bullshit that's as common as murder and jailhouse tattoos selling
bunk drugs in paint chip hotels where a cigarette burn on
the mattress tells you more about death than a splatter movie
festival. ~ Sparrow 13 Laughingwand

I'm still trying
to find the parts of me
I left hidden
between pages
of a story I never
wanted to forget,
but you were always
in the last place
I looked. ~ Wilder Poetry

Poetry is the special medium of spiritual crazy wisdom, the form of expression that comes closest to creating a bridge between words and what is wordless. ~ Wes Nisker

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

Dark be not dark but some other desire ~ Andrew Zawacki

We tend to think of "geography" in grandiose terms but sometimes forget that our own micro-geography can lend us competitive advantage. Taking in the "lay of the land" has always been an activity of the finest generals, and developing a practiced eye for the playing field is essential for successful strategic thought. What are the factors that make for a geographic advantage in your own interactions? Do you consciously structure situations to give yourself the geographic advantage? ~ Anonymous

Poetry is the journal of a sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air. ~ Carl Sandburg

Poems have ideas. The ideas of poems come out of their emotions and their emotions are carried on images. ~ E.L. Doctorow

She, however, stood and said nothing. / Small, unnoticed, she stood in the crowd, listened, and said / nothing. ~ Gertrud Kolmar

Love's Question "
And is this all true,
My ever-loving friend?
That the lightning-flash of the light in my eyes
Makes the clouds in your heart explode and blaze,
Is this true?
That my sweet lips are red as a blushing new bride,
My ever-loving friend,
Is this true?

That a tree of paradise flowers withing me,
That my foosteps ring like vinas beneath me,
Is this true?
That the night sheds drops of dew at the sight of me,
That the dawn surrounds me with light from delight in me,
Is this true?
That the touch of my hot cheek intoxicates the breeze,
My ever-loving friend,
Is this true?

That daylight hides in the dark of my hair,
That my arms hold life and death in their power,
Is this true?
That the earth can be wrapped in the end of my sari,
That my voice makes the world fall silent to hear me,
Is this true?
That the univrse is nothing but me and what loves me,
My ever-loving friend,
Is this true?

That for me alone your love has been waiting
Through worlds and ages awake and wandering,
Is this true?
That my voice, eyes, lips have brought you relief,
In a trice, from the cycle of life after life,
Is this true?
That you read on my soft forehead inginite Truth,
My ever-loving friend,
Is this true? ~ Rabindranath Tagore

When you reach out and touch other human beings, it doesn't matter whether you call it therapy or teaching or poetry. ~ Audre Lorde

wait for me where the skies meet the sea
the otherworld where our old souls
will meet again for the very first time
where our imagination takes flight
and magic isn't a fairytale ~ Dahi Tamara Koch

See with your soul and not your eyes
because to dance with the beasts you
must penetrate their disguise. ~ P.C. Cast

The specific excellence of verbal expression in poetry is to be clear without being low. ~ Aristotle.

How do god fit him ass in them jeans when he is, in fact, Everywhere ~ Patricia Lockwood

The only truth is face to face, the poem whose words become your
mouth
and dying in black and white we fight for what we love, not are ~ Frank O'Hara

Poetry takes courage because you have to face things and you try to articulate how you feel. ~ Edward Hirsch

The arts which need interpretation are the arts of time
music and poetry
and not the arts of space
sculpture and painting. ~ Salvador De Madariaga

All I've ever done is dream. That, and only that, has been the meaning of my existence. The only thing I've ever really cared about is my inner life. My greatest griefs faded to nothing the moment I opened the window onto my inner self and lost myself in watching.
I never tried to be anything other than a dreamer. I never paid any attention to people who told me to go out and live. I belonged always to whatever was far from me and to whatever I could never be. Anything that was not mine, however base, always seemed to be full of poetry. The only thing I ever loved was pure nothingness. ~ Fernando Pessoa

I wish to try my hand at a novel," he said. "Just scribbling, I assure you, but it strikes me as such a noble art, requiring none of the monetary resources of opera or drama, nor the erudition of poetry. Perchance a publisher could be found. I'd be satisfied by the printing of even a score of copies, if only to hold the bound work in my hands. It gives a unique satisfaction, I assume, the writing of a novel. ~ Kyle Muntz

Pound had argued - and Eliot had helped him prove - that a poem could be sustained by memorable moments. Olson proved that it could be sustained by unmemorable ones, provided that the texture of the accumulated jottings avoided the sound of failed poetry. ~ Clive James

There's too much risk in loving,'
the young boy said,
'no,'
said the old man,
'there's too much risk in not. ~ Atticus Poetry

Stranger inside me, when you are born, I will give you
a closed book and ask you never to read it, never rest,
never forgive a man who wants to save you. ~ Traci Brimhall

If you believe it, you can achieve it! ~ Sherria L. Grubbs

For you she learned to wear a short black slip
and red lipstick,
how to order a glass of red wine
and finish it. She learned to reach out
as if to touch your arm and then not
touch it, changing the subject.
Didn't you think, she'd begin, or
Weren't you sorry. . . .

To call your best friends
by their schoolboy names
and give them kisses good-bye,
to look away when they say
Your wife! So your confidence grows.
She doesn't ask what you want
because she knows.

Isn't that what you think?

When actually she was only waiting
to be told Take off your dress---
to be stunned, and then do this,
never rehearsed, but perfectly obvious:
in one motion up, over, and gone,
the X of her arms crossing and uncrossing,
her face flashing away from you in the fabric
so that you couldn't say if she was
appearing or disappearing. ~ Deborah Garrison

I've already written 300 space poems. But I look upon my ultimate form as being a poetic prose. When you read it, it appears to be prose, but within the prose you have embedded the techniques of poetry. ~ Story Musgrave

All I ask the haters
and I, too, am one
is that they strive to perfect their contempt, even consider bringing it to bear on poems, where it will be deepened, not dispelled, and where, by creating a place for possibility and present absences (like unheard melodies), it might come to resemble love. ~ Ben Lerner

People have a very limited idea of what being creative is - playing the guitar or the flute or writing poetry - so people go on writing rubbish in the name of poetry. You have to find out what you can do and what you cannot do. Everybody cannot do everything. You have to search and find your destiny. You have to grope in the dark, I know. It is not very clear-cut what your destiny is, but that's how life is. And it is good that one has to search for it - in the very search, something grows. ~ Rajneesh

One ambition of poetry, certainly, is to create a reverberant silence in its wake, one that means more or differently than the silence that preceded the poem. ~ Mark Doty

Sonnet XII: There is a Meetinghouse across the wold

There is a Meetinghouse across the wold
Near shaded churchyard where pine breezes sigh;
Such sacred mem'ries gently here unfold
Of rustic folk whom 'neath the yew trees lie.
Engraved on stones now crum'ling in the earth,
Of souls asleep for o'er a hundred years,
Foretell unceasing cycles - Death and Birth
That yew tree nods and weeps her unseen tears.
But God shall guide us through the gloom of night
Victorious over grim reaper's blade,
As yet we grasp to see eternal light
Amidst life's fickle joys which here do fade.
Victims of Death by lusty scythe bannish'd
Triumphant wake to find nightmares vanish'd!

13 February, 2013 ~ Timothy Salter

The way destiny forgot
To etch home on her palms,
The broken compass
Also forgot to point towards north. ~ Ruqayya Shaheed

When I'm with you,
The gravity of our moments,
The weight of our smiles
Makes time nearly stop. ~ L. Austen Johnson

A poet is someone whose words can grasp & pull the thread of a person's soul & make them unravel with delight. ~ Curtis Tyrone Jones