Poetry Prose Quotes

you'd take one look at me and whole pieces of the earth would break off and fall away finally leaving me alone with you. ~ AVA.

Gratitude
... here at home our faith dwindles
political division
causes tensions to kindle -
we should never forget
who stands at the door -
who shields us with armor
and shall forever more ... ~ Muse

Poetry is more than a form of art. It's a vibration and a pulsing heart. Whether it's sour or whether it's sweet. It can give you strength no one can defeat ~ Stanley Victor Paskavich

I said
"I love you so much it's killing me"
and you kept saying sorry
so I stopped explaining
for it never made sense to you
what always did to me
to let what you love
kill you
and never regret.
As Romeo is dying Juliet says
"I am willing to die to remain by your side"
and love was never a static place of rest
but the last second of euphoria
while throwing yourself out from a 20 store window
to be able to say
"I flew before I hit the ground",
and it was glorious.
Don't be sorry.
The fall was beautiful, dear.
The crash was beautiful. ~ Charlotte Eriksson

I started out as a writer. Poetry and prose and also kind of satirical David Sedaris-esque stuff. ~ Pauley Perrette

In general, I would think that at present prose writers are much in advance of the poets. In the old days, I read more poetry than prose, but now it is in prose where you find things being put together well, where there is great ambition, and equal talent. Poets have gotten so careless, it is a disgrace. You can't pick up a page. All the words slide off. ~ William H Gass

Maybe I live in the gates that lead to outbound international flights. Maybe that is home.
And do I feel more comfortable at the departures or at the arrivals? ~ Michal Coret

Now is History as fast as the mind remembers. ~ Kirby Wright

they told her, "fear the reaper."
she laughed to herself and muttered, 'baby, death ain't nothing' more than a quick fuck.
a little bit of silence after he comes. ~ Taylor Rhodes

It's January and I'm kicking snow off the ground. I just threw out the flower you made me promise to water, handle with care, because I was too careless, you said. Careless with things and people, around me and behind
and I remember being still for just a second or two, thinking that it's so much easier to leave and start anew, than take care of what's already here. ~ Charlotte Eriksson

the hope is small
but it is everything. ~ AVA.

A Coy Aversion

...a flutter
too shy
to be seen... ~ Muse

i am a woman
and i am alone,
and i cannot tell
which one of the two
i love being more. ~ AVA.

i was once swallowed in a dark shroud
of fear, pain, and self-loathing
which i believed i couldn't voice
because if i spoke of my loneliness
would it not prove my uselessness?
light could not break the shadows
unless i asked for help
and when i finally became so lost
i reached out in desperation
for even the smallest guidance
every tearful thought i had hidden
was exposed in all of its falsehood
depression is not the problem
it's when we choose to conceal it



-My Relationship with Depression ~ Michelle S. Smith

Sleeping Atlantis

Silent cool waters
dancing upon her skin ~
silent cool water
ushering dreams within... ~ Muse

I used to write sonnets and various things, and moved from there into writing prose, which, incidentally, is a lot more interesting than poetry, including the rhythms of prose. ~ Shelby Foote

Hasten Little Maiden
...
stop and listen
for pearls of wisdom
stop and listen
as the river glistens ... ~ Muse

It was quite a beautiful thing, the way we simply just came to be, with no effort or trying and slowly we found each other's hands in the dark. No chains or promises, just a simple sign of hope
that things will go on and get better
and that things and people and views are still out there, yet to be found. ~ Charlotte Eriksson

Only those who will love longer than they expected to can truly love pecan pie, which doesn't explain its status as death rows most requested last dessert, or why chopped pecans, corn syrup, directions from the Karo bottle's cherry-red side are what mercy taste like to some. But there you have it. ~ Kate Lebo

Do You Believe
... on this road of life
on this day
I take you
now husband and wife ... ~ Muse

you giver of light.
you lover of love.

you beautiful
beautiful
human being
you. ~ AVA.

Maybe it is something to do with age, but I have become fonder of poetry than of prose. ~ Aung San Suu Kyi

Prose, in his experience, calls for many more words than poetry. There is no point in embarking on prose if one lacks confidence that one will be alive the next day to carry on with the task. ~ J.M. Coetzee

Lover of poetry, prose and procrastination. ~ Stephen Fitzsimons

i over love.
i under love.

i am either a flood
or i am nothing. ~ AVA.

Prose unfolds in time; and time contains both obstacles and revelations. Prose develops, the way characters and situations do. It requires a flow. A poem is an instant, lightning across the sky. Prose is before the storm, the storm, after the storm. ~ Molly Peacock

However, if a poem can be reduced to a prose sentence, there can't be much to it. ~ James Schuyler

there's always been a little sadness inside my happiness.

i've never been able to separate the two. ~ AVA.

you need to be careful with me.

i fall in love
and i fall in love forever. ~ AVA.

no one needs love from you
more than you need love from you.

love yourself first,
and you will always be in love. ~ AVA.

hold company with yourself so sacred
that even when you are alone,
you are whole. ~ AVA.

a darkened hue
with lips like cherries
eyes of lightning
and that's the moment
i knew we were on fire ~ Dominic Riccitello

keep following your heart.
it won't always be easy, but it'll be the most important thing you'll do. ~ AVA.

The young student sits with his head bent over his books, and his mind straying in youth's dreamland; where prose is prowling on the desk and poetry hiding in the heart. ~ Rabindranath Tagore

We don't attempt to have any theme for a number of the anthology, or to have any particular sequence. We just put in things that we like, and then we try to alternate the prose and the poetry. ~ James Laughlin

and sadness clung to me
because she did not know
how to be alone. ~ AVA.

Nothingness
... there in this place
where nothingness takes
but for the glimmer
a steadfast shimmer
all would be consumed ... ~ Muse

you're going to love your way out of this.
out of the hurt.
out of the pain.

you're going to love your way out of it
and be free. ~ AVA.

The universe on your skin is empty
from all the silence on your tongue.
Forgive yourself. Let your body heal
from all the wounds you did not inflict
on yourself. Drop the sword you carry
on your shoulder for self-defense.
Lower the armor you hold high up
for protection. Those who harmed you
are not going to come back. Those who
have left never intended to return. ~ Akif Kichloo

Why be bothered with other people's set-ups? it only leads to torture. ~ Bob Dylan

The poetry from the eighteenth century was prose; the prose from the seventeenth century was poetry. ~ David Hare

everyone is in a hurry and things are always disappearing, and i am always left standing here--
alone, waiting for the things that stay. ~ AVA.

I suppose one starts out, as a child, being romantic and dreaming of adventure. Poetic. Then reality comes along, and with it, a whole lot of prose. ~ Roberta Pearce

Tiny Giggles
Silly giggles of laughter
I store upon a shelf
I give some to other
I save some for myself
I am rich beyond all measure
Though not with worldly wealth
I store up these treasures
For my heart and soulful health. ~ Muse

The great error consists in supposing that poetry is an unnatural form of language. We should all like to speak poetry at the moment when we truly live, and if we do not speak it, it is because we have an impediment in our speech. It is not song that is the narrow or artificial thing, it is conversation that is a broken and stammering attempt at song. When we see men in a spiritual extravaganza, like Cyrano de Bergerac, speaking in rhyme, it is not our language disguised or distorted, but our language rounded and made whole. ~ G.K. Chesterton

Everything in creation has its appointed painter or poet and remains in bondage like the princess in the fairy tale 'til its appropriate liberator comes to set it free. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

the opening,
the breaking,
the falling apart
is always so quick.

the hurting,
the healing,
the putting back together
is always too long. ~ AVA.

I used the word 'prose' in the Trans-Siberian in the early Latin sense of prosa dictu. Poem seemed to me too pretentious, too narrow. Prose is more open, popular. ~ Blaise Cendrars

Let my life as Poet begin. I want the life of the Poet. I have labored for over twelve years, one thousand pages of prose. Now, I want the easiness of poetry. The brevity of the poem. ~ Maxine Hong Kingston

Yet you stand, too ashamed to run, too fearful to embrace. God I see so much of
what I love in that face. ~ Suenammi Richards

if god is real, she put all of herself into this girl. she vowed to unleash a woman so violently herself, the sky would collapse every time she came to orgasm. ~ Taylor Rhodes

Do You Believe
Do you believe
that I have loved you
since the dawn of time?
Do you believe
that we were destined
to be intertwined? ... ~ Muse

And I realise the only way to tell the others
is through the way my voice can take these broken words
and turn it into music.
Turn it into poetry.
And I sing to make myself come alive,
but also for you,
because I'd like this to mean something.
To not disappear with the dark I will enter one day
and so now I will tell.
If not for you, then for my own heart,
because it tells me to,
and I'm learning to listen. ~ Charlotte Eriksson

If freedom is free and none need worry, then what blood drops for thee? ~ Ryan Goodrich

i can't hold onto love.
i'm not gentle enough.

i always end up
crushing the thing
in between my fingertips. ~ AVA.

you remind me of someone i knew. looked just like you but kind. ~ Taylor Rhodes

It ... whatever 'it' is, has swallowed me and I lie here in the pit of its cold dark stomach being eaten alive by its bile and I ... I don't even know if I want to be saved. ~ Kellie Elmore

If I stay close to the sea, I will go on well. ~ Charlotte Eriksson

And I laugh and I spin and dance and frolic in ecstasy and I ... I hurt no more, while you ... you petrified little man, are left to wonder if it's you I speak of. ~ Kellie Elmore

some people are so deep
you fall into them
and you never stop falling. ~ AVA.

i swallowed the syllables of your name
and i was full. ~ AVA.

Tell all the truth but tell it slant. ~ Emily Dickinson

You big ugly. You too empty. You desert with your nothing nothing nothing. You scorched suntanned. Old too quickly. Acres of suburbs watching the telly. You bore me. Freckle silly children. You nothing much. With your big sea. Beach beach beach. I've seen enough already. You dumb dirty city with bar stools. You're ugly. You silly shopping town. You copy. You too far everywhere. You laugh at me. When I came this woman gave me a box of biscuits. You try to be friendly but you're not very friendly. You never ask me to your house. You insult me. You don't know how to be with me. Road road tree tree. I came from crowded and many. I came from rich. You have nothing to offer. You're poor and spread thin. You big. So what. I'm small. It's what's in. You silent on Sunday. Nobody on your streets. You dead at night. You go to sleep too early. You don't excite me. You scare me with your hopeless. Asleep when you walk. Too hot to think. You big awful. You don't match me. You burnt out. You too big sky. You make me a dot in the nowhere. You laugh with your big healthy. You want everyone to be the same. You're dumb. You do like anybody else. You engaged Doreen. You big cow. You average average. Cold day at school playing around at lunchtime. Running around for nothing. You never accept me. For your own. You always ask me where I'm from. You always ask me. You tell me I look strange. Different. You don't adopt me. You laugh at the way I speak. You think you're better than me. You don't like ~ Ania Walwicz

I ache not from need -
but from my heart's gluttony of you. ~ Muse

Sometimes the universe works in a really weird way. You hate the people who love you, and you love the people who just aren't really that into you. And then there are those who love you as you love them, but fate just decides that you're not meant to be. ~ Ka.ya

Always be a poet, even in prose. ~ Charles Baudelaire

Of all the art forms, poetry is the most economical. It is the one which is the most secret, which requires the least physical labor, the least material, and the one which can be done between shifts, in the hospital pantry, on the subway, and on scraps of surplus paper. Over the last few years, writing a novel on tight finances, I came to appreciate the enormous differences in the material demands between poetry and prose. As we reclaim our literature, poetry has been the major voice of poor, working class, and Colored women. A room of one's own may be a necessity for writing prose, but so are reams of paper, a typewriter, and plenty of time. ~ Audre Lorde

Some can't handle the fiery poet, how she rips into souls burning words into prose. ~ Melody Lee

The characters in my novels are my own unrealised possibilities. That is why I am equally fond of them all and equally horrified by them. Each one has crossed a border that I myself have circumvented. ~ Milan Kundera

Git'er Done
They beat their swords upon their shields
To no beast or man would they yield ~ Muse

Honor Lost

Ambulant sunshine pierced
the soot covered glass ~
the feeble man wandered by
in this ritual morning pass ... ~ Muse

Poetry has done enough when it charms, but prose must also convince. ~ H.L. Mencken

there is something magical and addicting about going somewhere, being alone, and finding yourself in parts of the world you never knew existed, finding parts of yourself you never knew you would find. ~ AVA.

Flames moved towards him
and dropped within
-
singed and marred
his tender skin ...
(the frightful plight tale) ~ Muse

We are difficult. Human beings are difficult. We're difficult to ourselves, we're difficult to each other. And we are mysteries to ourselves, we are mysteries to each other. One encounters in any ordinary day far more real difficulty than one confronts in the most "intellectual" piece of work. Why is it believed that poetry, prose, painting, music should be less than we are? Why does music, why does poetry have to address us in simplified terms, when if such simplification were applied to a description of our own inner selves we would find it demeaning? ~ Geoffrey Hill

Looking from outside into an open window one never sees as much as when one looks through a closed window. There is nothing more profound, more mysterious, more pregnant, more insidious, more dazzling than a window lighted by a single candle. What one can see out in the sunlight is always less interesting than what goes on behind a windowpane. In that black or luminous square life lives, life dreams, life suffers. ~ Charles Baudelaire

i am learning that when love wants to stay it will stay.
i am learning that when love wants to go it will go. ~ AVA.

From the prose poem "The Universe Thrums on regardless" in my book SPAN.
We are almost nothing in the night. Reduced to warm blobs and the sound of breathing. There is comfort in that. ~ Jay Woodman

The window of her sadness was so vast that it almost opened a path to her soul. ~ Ondjaki

Outside our small safe place flies mystery. ~ A.S. Byatt

let me tell you i'm in love with you. let me tell you that the first thing i do when i wake is think of you. let me be completely honest about this-- about what you mean to me.
let me take it there without ruining everything. ~ AVA.

In general, dividing literature into prose and poetry began with the appearance of prose, for only in prose could such a division be expressed. By its nature, by its essence, art is hierarchical, automatically, and in this hierarchy, poetry stands above prose. If only because poetry is older. Poetry really is a very strange thing, because it belongs to a troglodyte as well as to a snob. It can be produced in the Stone Age and in the most modern salon, whereas prose requires a developed society, a developed structure, certain established classes, if you like. Here you could start reasoning like a Marxist without even being wrong. The poet works from the voice, from the sound. For him, content is not as important as is ordinarily believed. For a poet, there is almost no difference between phonetics and semantics. Therefore, only very rarely does the poet give any thought to who in fact comprises his audience. That is, he does so much more rarely than the prose writer. ~ Joseph Brodsky

you wanted it all to make sense
and you wanted the most complicated answer,
but the answer is simple.
just be. ~ AVA.

Poems, even when narrative, do not resemble stories. All stories are about battles, of one kind or another, which end in victory or defeat. Everything moves towards the end, when the outcome will be known.
Poems, regardless of any outcome, cross the battlefields, tending the wounded, listening to the wild monologues of the triumphant or the fearful. They bring a kind of peace. Not by anaesthesia or easy reassurance, but by recognition and the promise that what has been experienced cannot disappear as if it had never been. Yet the promise is not of a monument. (Who, still on a battlefield, wants monuments?) The promise is that language has acknowledged, has given shelter, to the experience which demanded, which cried out. ~ John Berger

The problem in this world is that we have poetry but insist on living in prose. ~ J.M. Campos

Calico Kitty

My calico kitty
was painted and primed
she could prowl
the night away ~
without spending a dime... ~ Muse

The difference between superlative pie and a wish for cake is crust. Understand that pie is a generous but self-centered substance. It likes attention, not affection. Do not hug your crust. Do not rub its back or five its high. Don't fuss with refrigerators every step oft he way. Keep the water and butter cold, and remember what a wise baker once said: The goal is pie. ~ Kate Lebo

By degrees, the bitterness at my heart diffused itself to the circumference of the circle in which my life went its cheerless mechanical round. ~ Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Tender Ember
... Barred and branded
to be forever unloved
I was a tender ember
seeking solace from above ... ~ Muse

Insofar as craft and poetics in a poem have a politics, I wanted to avoid that brittle enjambed-prose-sentence-lyric verse, where you have standard sentences snapped off and scattered decoratively across the page (which I might go out on a limb and say was characteristic of some leftist poets, Beat poets, street poets and populist poets of the 70s and 80s - all of whom I basically view as comrades, I should probably say, to this day) and on the other hand I also wanted my poetics to operate differently than those more right-wing academics - in practice - even if in their poems or statements they proclaim public leftist views or ideas - they remain academic poets, operating in elite university-supported circles, institutionalized and reading before institutional audiences, awarding grants and awards to each other, sitting on each other's grants panels, awards and tenure committees, as Philip Levine admitted in an interview in Don't Ask, 'giving prizes to friends. ~ Sesshu Foster

things keep falling in and out of place.
this is the universe's way of taking care of me. ~ AVA.

Poetry privileges music and is aesthetically more challenging. Prose privileges information and is emotionally more challenging. ~ Mary Karr

i let you love me.
i let you take care of me.
i let you do things to me
no one was allowed to do before. ~ AVA.

Chains
chains that hold me to the ground
chains that keep me solidly bound
chains that tether my heart to you
chains that only one truth ... ~ Muse

Poetry is prose in slow motion. ~ Nicholson Baker

Ode to the Chamber
... linger here amidst the chamber
in which we embrace our love
talk to me of sonnets
and call me turtledove ... ~ Muse

i am not a jealous person,
but when i am with you,
the thought of someone else
pulling your attention away from me
kills me a little inside
each time. ~ AVA.

i act harder than i am.
i am softer than i look. ~ AVA.

The Inner Self
... What makes us who we are
should be glorified
personified
and sung unto the stars! ~ Muse

I took him to the river and said "let's watch something drown," So he took a stone
and I took my necklace
and we threw it all together,
the way I always think I will get better in July. Things will change and sounds won't ache
and I gave my heart to uncertainty so many times, and so I took him to the river,
threw the necklace in the river to slowly watch it drown, or burn, or fade away
like I've done so many times. ~ Charlotte Eriksson