Poetry Critic Quotes

That night I looked Stephanie [Burt] up online and started reading more about her work...I kept encountering a striking factoid...: she's often cited as the most influential poetry critic of her generation. And she's openly trans. This is not the world I was taught I would grow into when I was a young trans child -- the one where transgender people are heard, are brilliant, are influential, are even the best. At anything. Being trans, I'd learned subliminally, was supposed to keep you from being that -- even if you loved your trans self, and even if some other trans people and a few allies did too, the world at large would keep your potential tamped down."

- from "Surface Difficulty: An Adventure in Reading Trans Poetry," Original Plumbing Magazine 2014 ~ Mitch Kellaway

She winced and covered her ears as Eric,onstage, wrestled with his microphone.
"Sorry about that, guys!" he yelled. "All right. I'm Eric, and this is my homeboy Matt on the drums. My first poem is called 'Untitled.'" He screwed up his face as if in pain, and wailed into the mike. "Come my faux juggernaut, my nefarious loins! Slather every protuberance with arid zeal!"
Simon slid down in his seat. "Please don't tell anyone I know him."
Clary giggled. "Who uses the word 'loins'?"
"Eric," Simon said grimly. "All his poems have loins in them."
'Turgid is my torment!" Eric wailed. "Agony swells within!"
"You bet it does," Clary said. ~ Cassandra Clare

It's the winter of my youth now, And there is no one even to hug, The girl I longed for never came, And all the waiting turned into, These long and lonely hours, Which faded into the pages of some books… And what is left of all this learning now, If not just worries and fears. ~ Piyush Rohankar

Cities and roads
I have never seen
Are in the background of your photos
Yet, I don't feel
How faraway you are ~ Shasika Amali Munasinghe

Once there was a dictator. He drove millions to various kinds of deaths, by war, in prison, or simply in harsh deserts farming their lives away. He destroyed temples, burned books, and ruined the art of calligraphy. He wrote terrible poetry and forced everyone to learn it, so destroying the literary taste of one quarter of humanity. He remained a warrior even as Chairman. He was at his best as a warrior, because as a warrior, he was fighting for his people, dreaming for them. After that, he only ground them down. But I forgive him for saying one beautiful thing:
'Women hold up half the sky.'
Chairman Mao Tse Tung ~ Geoff Ryman

I will not feel, I will not
feel, until
I have to ~ Norman MacCaig

February. Get ink, shed tears. Write of it, sob your heart out, sing, While torrential slush that roars Burns in the blackness of the spring. Go hire a buggy. For six grivnas, Race through the noice of bells and wheels To where the ink and all you grieving Are muffled when the rainshower falls. To where, like pears burnt black as charcoal, A myriad rooks, plucked from the trees, Fall down into the puddles, hurl Dry sadness deep into the eyes. Below, the wet black earth shows through, With sudden cries the wind is pitted, The more haphazard, the more true The poetry that sobs its heart out. ~ Boris Pasternak

Darkness moves like a pack of wild dogs.
The wind moves like a wounded animal.
The ground must be full of teeth by now. ~ Cecilia Llompart

I love you most in that place between coffee and sleep. ~ Atticus Poetry

And all the falling stars that I saw as a child, I found them at her feet, And my joy to watch her dance, Over them in her Carmel. She is the romance of a winter love story, The picture of a million memories, The blood of God flows through her heart, The space in between her arms, Is the doorway to heaven, The light for my mornings comes from her smile, Oh to love her is like a journey, A journey of a million miles… ~ Piyush Rohankar

Don't live each day as if it were your last,
for you might break your back and breathe your last.
Rather, live as if a hundred days left;
oh, not so pressured, of tension bereft.

We do work to live, not do live to work;
always rushing is not fun, but a joke.
Live each day not so stressed nor so relaxed;
it's in balanced way where joy's at the max. ~ Rodolfo Martin Vitangcol, The Pink Poetry

FOR WANG LUN

Li Bai is already on the boat, preparing to depart,
I suddenly hear the sound of stamping and singing on the shore.
The water of Taohua pond reaches a thousand feet in depth,
But still it's not as deep as Wang Lun's feelings seeing me off. ~ Li Bai

Don't fall in love with me. I am dissonance. I am always at war with myself – confusing my head with my heart, always retreating into my mind, because I don't want to lose. ~ Nessie Q.

It comes down to this: we're pieces of equipment
To be counted and signed for.
On occasion some of us break down,
And those parts which can't be salvaged
Are replaced with other GI parts, that's all. ~ Rolando Hinojosa

Always carry what is beautiful in your heart. ~ Will Advise

Poetry is given to the poet. I don't think a poet can sit down at will and write. If he does, nothing worthwhile can come of it. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

I never knew what Mother knowed,
Like how a thread and needle sewed,
And how a kiss healed boo-boos fast.
Why family knots were made to last.

I never knew how Mother saw
A caring man in angry pa,
A smile beneath the teary gloom,
A game inside a messy room.

I never knowed what Mother knew,
Like how to smile when days were blue,
And how to laugh for laughter's sake,
While giving up her slice of cake.

I never saw what Mother see'd
Like honor pulling garden weeds,
Or deep confessions in a look,
And hope alive in storybooks.

I never knew how Mother knowed
To hand out carrots when it snowed,
And why hot cocoa liked the rain,
While naptime kept a person sane.

For mother knowed and see'd it all.
A winner in a strike-out ball.
A 'yes, please' in a shoulder shrug.
A 'love you mostest' in a hug.

Perhaps, someday, I'll come to know
What Mother saw and knowed as so.
Like how 'I'm right' can be all wrong,
And why the night requires a song.

But of the things I learned and knew
I never doubted one thing true.
My mother made it crystal clear,
she knowed and loved me ever dear. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

I don't think I've ever dared to write down what I see in the ruins of me, or tell in any detail the scars and all their secrets. ~ Ashly Lorenzana

The words of true poems are the tuft and final applause of science. ~ Walt Whitman

Are we like two stars in a constellation
Seeming so close
And making so much sense
Yet in reality
We are separated by lightyears
And shall never meet?
Except, perhaps
In that sacred space
Between dreams and reality
Called hope. ~ Justin Wetch

A monster
Someone who left me in the dark
Someone who darkened me
A million times over ~ Dorothea Lasky

There is no merit in being truthful when one is truthful by nature, or rather when one can be nothing else; it is a gift, like poetry or music. But it needs courage to be truthful after carefully considering the matter, unless a kind of pride is involved; for example, the man who says to himself, "I am ugly," and then says, "I am ugly" to his friends, lest they should think themselves the first to make the discovery. ~ Eugene Delacroix

You, my reader, who see me close, wonder about my heartbeats and measure my words, you my close friend who know my eyes and the home of their prose, you, my only lover, who always move my life, my poetry's pace and rhyme,...
I can not disclose the shape of metaphors, nor what they bashfully display behind the robes of their naked source; but you can use the eyes of heart to feel what they are made of.
And if it's a tear or a smile I evoke, it means we are human, it means we care and we love.
It means we are both beautiful. (Soar) ~ Soar

I have found so much beauty in the dark,
as I have found a lot of horror in the light. ~ Azereth Skivel

There's lots of room to be your own worse critic. It's just you, so I think that's inherit, that voice that's always that's there monitoring everything you do. It's definitely worse; the critic is harder when it's just you. If you're doing a show, then the critic can blame the other actors your with. ~ Jason Graae

History's smell.
Like old roses on a breeze.
It would lurk forever in ordinary things. In coat hangers. Tomatoes. In the tar on roads. In certain colours. In the plates at a restaurant. In the absence of words. And the emptiness in eyes. ~ Arundhati Roy

From I Knew a Woman
I knew a woman, lovely in her bones,
When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them;
Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one:
The shapes a bright container can contain! ~ Theodore Roethke

Love is a bloody battle, and life - a ruthless war. ~ Nichomachus

It was a common complaint amongst the Arts students that their library was in dire need of refurbishment. To call the old building shabby chic was being kind. It didn't have automated stacks or self-service machines like the Management and Sciences library the other side of campus and the carpets and bookcases looked like they were probably the Victorian originals.
But on days like this one, where the springtime sunshine streamed in through the high windows and set the dust motes dancing, Harriet sincerely felt that those BSc lot could stuff their vending machines and state of the art study pods. The Old Library was clearly suited for those who had poetry in their souls, rather than numbers in their heads. ~ Erin Lawless

You grow. You are large.
You are a 19th century poem.
All of America is inside you,
a catalogue of lives and land
and burrowing things.
-From "Catalogue ~ Donika Kelly

Poetry is inspired by the elements of random thoughts, an overflow of gazing at the unseen. ~ Michael Bassey Johnson

Welcome to the figurative world of poetry where nothing is 'real,' but everything matters. ~ Laurence Overmire

Some poems are written great, some poems are written swell. But then there are poems that could win a prize in Hell. ~ Stanley Victor Paskavich

Pure poetry in motion. A swift-moving, heartfelt tale of love and loss, two stories intersecting-an d connecting-by magic. Michelle Baker is a born poet, and a born writer. The Canoe is just the start of what I hope to be a long idyllic journey through the love and soul of the human heart. ~ Trent Zelazny

I've given offense by saying I'd as soon write free verse as play tennis with the net down. ~ Robert Frost

If it were not for poetry, few men would ever fall in love. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Better poetry than riches,
Better poverty than fortunes. ~ Stephan Attia

Once a poet calls his myth a myth, he prevents the reader from treating it as a reality; we use the word 'myth' only for stories we ourselves cannot believe. ~ Adam Kirsch