Poetry Community Quotes

A group of us started a community center in Santa Monica. We've tried different programs, and three have worked really well. A poetry group. Once a week we visit Venice High and talk to girls at risk. ~ Lisa Bonet

I love when I meet generous poets, and generous meaning nice people, who give to the poetry community, who do interviews, read other people's books, and talk about them, spread the ... love, I guess. That means a lot to me. ~ Victoria Chang

The poetry community here has been extraordinarily welcoming. ~ George Murray

I want to be able to touch every part of our community with poetry. ~ Clinton D. Powell

She is in love with herself and every ounce of it. ~ Nidhi M. Jhaveri

I've always felt alone and isolated, and living on the West Coast, there's no poetry community out here, and if there is, it's really spread out - because it's LA, it's spread out. ~ Victoria Chang

We can never get a re-creation of community and heal our society without giving our citizens a sense of belonging. ~ Patch Adams

Had Prozac been available last century, Baudelaire's "spleen," Edgar Allan Poe's moods, the poetry of Sylvia Plath, the lamentations of so many other poets, everything with a soul would have been silenced*....
If large pharmaceutical companies were able to eliminate the seasons, they would probably do so--for profit, of course.

*This does not mean that Sylvia Plath should not have been medicated at all. The point is that pathologies should be medicated when there is risk of suicide, not mood swings. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

If architecture is going to nudge, cajole, and inspire a community to challenge the status quo into making responsible changes, it will take the subversive leadership of academics and practitioners who keep reminding students of the profession's responsibilities. ~ Samuel Mockbee

Transformational entertainment is a story that both entertains and uplifts you, not simply because you are inspired, but because it reveals the mechanics that allow people to have more effective, loving lives, lives of more connection, community, and communion. ~ Eckhart Tolle

Meaningful student involvement is the process of engaging students as partners in every facet of school change for the purpose strengthening their commitment to education, community & democracy. ~ Adam Fletcher

The comedy of the wicked,
Is the tragedy of the saint;
But the saint's comedy,
Is the wicked's remedy. ~ Stephan Attia

I'm a poet. I'm just a renaissance man in my heart. I can build shelves and I can write poetry. ~ Anthony Mackie

A skillful literary artist has constructed a tale. If wise, he has not fashioned his thoughts to accommodate his incidents; but having conceived, with deliberate care, a certain unique or single effect to be wrought out, he then invents as may best aid him in establishing this preconceived effect. If his very initial sentence tend not to the outbringing of this effect, then he has failed in his first step. In the whole composition there should be no words written, of which the tendency, direct or indirect, is not to the one pre-established design. And by such means, with such care and skill, a picture is at length painted which leaves in the mind of him who contemplates it with a kindred art, a sense of the fullest satisfaction. The idea of the tale has been presented unblemished because undisturbed: and this is an end unattainable by the novel. Undue brevity is just as exceptionable here as in the poem; but undue length is yet more to be avoided. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

A crucial turning point in that earlier history occurred when men and women of good will turned aside from the task of shoring up the Roman imperium and ceased to identify the continuation of civility and moral community with the maintenance of that imperium. What they set themselves out to achieve instead - often not recognizing fully what they were doing - was the construction of new forms of community within which the moral life could be sustained so that both morality and civility might survive the coming age of barbarism and darkness. ~ Alasdair MacIntyre

The work of great poetry is to aid us to become free artists ourselves ... The art of reading poetry is an authentic training in the augmentation of consciousness, perhaps the most authentic of healthy modes. ~ Harold Bloom

It is not the fact that we are united in common goals or purposes that makes us a community. Rather, it is the fact that we share a common life in Christ. ~ Jerry Bridges

Then, what is sacrelige [sic]? If it is nothing more than a rebellion against dogma, it is eventually as meaningless as the dogma it defies, and they are both become hounds ranting in the high grass, never see the boar in the thicket. Only a religious person can perpetrate sacrelige: and if its blasphemy reaches the heart of the question; if it investigates deeply enough to unfold, not the pattern, but the materials of the pattern, and the necessity of a pattern; if it questions so deeply that the doubt it arouses is frightening and cannot be dismissed; then it has done its true sacreligious [sic] work, in the service of its adversary: the only service that nihilism can ever perform.
(unused 1949 prefatory note to The Recognitions) ~ William Gaddis

Human beings love poetry. They don't even know it sometimes ... whether they're the songs of Bono, or the songs of Justin Bieber ... they're listening to poetry. ~ Maya Angelou

Let her know that you understand that words are love. ~ Rosemarie Urquico

Excessive brightness drove the poet into darkness.

(essay : Hölderlin And The Essence Of Poetry, chapter from my copy of The origin of the work of art) ~ Martin Heidegger

You want to be angry but you can't stop looking and when you look you love and when you love the entire world unfolds around you ~ Sina Queyras

The life spills over, some days.
She cannot be at rest,
Wishes she could explode

Like that red tree -
The one that bursts into fire
All this week.

Senses her infinite smallness
But can't seize it,
Recognizes the folly of desire,

The folly of withdrawal -
Kicks at the curb, the pavement,
If only she could, at this moment,

When what she's doing is plodding
To the bus stop, to go to school,
Passing that fiery tree - if only she could

Be making love,
Be making a painting,
Be exploding, be speeding through the universe

Like a photon, like a shower
Of yellow flames -
She believes if she could only catch up

With the riding rhythm of things, of her own electrons,
Then she would be at rest -
If she could forget school,

Climb the tree,
Be the tree,
burn like that. ~ Alicia Suskin Ostriker

Today, find a point of stillness: brief, but precious slight, but full small, but luminously real. Find a point stillness in the balance of all things between the breathing out and breathing in. ~ Na'ama Yehuda

Realism is life minus the poetry. ~ Marty Rubin

It is better to buy from a small, privately owned local store than from a chain store. It is better to buy a good product than a bad one. Do not buy anything you don't need. Do as much as you can for yourself. If you cannot do something for yourself, see if you have a neighbor who can do it for you. Do everything you can to see that your money stays as long as possible in the local community. ~ Wendell Berry

You pick up loads of baggage with your first record with reaction to it from fans and critics. So I went to Ireland by myself for a couple of weeks with my guitar. I read lots of poetry, I read Patti Smith's autobiography and started words and phrases and then songs started to take shape. ~ Ellie Goulding

I never really liked poetry readings; I liked to read poetry by myself, but I liked singing, chanting my lyrics to this jazz group. ~ Leonard Cohen

At a time when we must seek to rebuild trust between law enforcement and the local community, I am deeply concerned that the deployment of military equipment and vehicles sends a conflicting message. ~ Eric Holder

All it takes for generosity to flow is awareness. By actively pursuing awareness and knowledge, we can make choices that cause less harm and greater good to others in the global community of our shared earth. ~ Zoe Weil

I grew up in Columbia, Maryland, a planned community built during the sixties. During the early years, it was very integrated. I grew up being taught by black teachers with black principals and vice principals and, you know, a lot of black friends. We played in mixed groups, and I kind of thought that was how it was. ~ Michael Chabon

When a language creates - as it does - a community within the present, it does so only by courtesy of a community between the present and the past. ~ Christopher Ricks

Eyes closed on an open soul...the world starts from within its core towards its final frontier: the end surface. ~ Soar

I write, but I don't write poetry. I don't rhyme or anything like that. ~ Channing Tatum

Color is the overpowering of black; white – the final victory over black. ~ Dejan Stojanovic

Drop by drop I will fall
On your body and soul
And find a home in you! ~ Avijeet Das

When the word began to get out, the idea of tying imitations of aquatic worms was not met with universal approval in the fly-fishing community. It seems that worms had somehow gotten a bad name. I think a fishing pal of mine hit it on the head when he said, It just pisses them off that you can catch trout, I mean really big trout, on a fly that a five-year old can tie in twenty seconds! ~ Ed Engle

These I have loved:
Pork with apple sauce; tea in a heavy mug;
The smell of new books, and musty ones;
A girl with red coils for curls
--Her scream--Her smile;
The slap of a blonde dog's tongue
Against my face; and an old face--Nana's;
A broken fence--a secret pathway between two houses;
The sinking into a familiar bed;
Sheets white and crispy clean;
The return of a woman in a green coat--
Imperfect and human; The sound of poetry;
And of pencil lead scuffing the page as I write;
Made-up stores; and Truth.
These I have loved. ~ Sarah Crossan

You see, we're all savages, more or less. We're
supposed to be civilized and cultured - to know all about poetry and philosophy and art and science, and so on; but how many of us know even the meanings of these names? ~ George Bernard Shaw

But I really felt that, something about the lights going down, and the sense of community. I saw this movie at one festival, and there were 1700 people. ~ Paul Reiser

don't promise to live forever
promise to forever live while you're alive ~ Atticus Poetry

We create our buildings and then they create us. Likewise, we construct our circle of friends and our communities and then they construct us. ~ Frank Lloyd Wright

I don't create poetry, I create myself, for me my poems are a way to me. ~ Edith Sodergran

For a moment
he became smoke.
How intimate,
now,
the cloudy sky. ~ Izumi Shikibu

I think it was the ability of the theater to communicate ideas and extol virtues that drew me to it. And also, I was, and remain, fascinated by the idea of an audience as a community of people who gather willingly to bear witness. ~ August Wilson

Life is a never-ending poetry of love. ~ Debasish Mridha

Rhyme and meter force gaps in meaning so the muse can enter. ~ Mason Cooley

No one understands now. Those who could
hear a song this deeply vanished long ago. ~ Li Bai

I just feel that getting out there physically and protecting New York, putting my arms around everyone and protecting them ... to see this happen to our city and our community. ~ Sigourney Weaver

This is proof that she cares about something; it doesn't always have to be me. ~ Blythe Baird

Autumn, whispering through the maples,
Pleaded: 'Die here with me! ~ Anna Akhmatova

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

No duties. I don't have to be profound.
I don't have to be artistically perfect.
Or sublime. Or edifying.
I just wander. I say: 'You were running,
That's fine. It was the thing to do.'
And now the music of the worlds transforms me.
My planet enters a different house.
Trees and lawns become more distinct.
Philosophies one after another go out.
Everything is lighter yet not less odd.
Sauces, wine vintages, dishes of meat.
We talk a little of district fairs,
Of travels in a covered wagon with a cloud of dust behind,
Of how rivers once were, what the scent of calamus is.
That's better than examining one's private dreams.
And meanwhile it has arrived. It's here, invisible.
Who can guess how it got here, everywhere.
Let others take care of it. Time for me to play hooky.
Buena notte. Ciao. Farewell. ~ Czeslaw Milosz

the way she talked
about the things she loved
made the whole room turn
to see what shone ~ Atticus Poetry

In poems, equally as in philosophic disquisitions, genius produces the strongest impressions of novelty while it rescues the most admitted truths from the impotence caused by the very circumstance of their universal admission. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge