Rules Of Poetry Quotes

When you depart from standard usage, it should be deliberate and not an accidental lapse. Like a poet who breaks the rules of poetry for creative effect, this only works when you know and respect the rule you are breaking. If you have never heard of the rules you are breaking, you have no right to do so, and you are likely to come off like a buffoon or a barbarian. Breaking rules, using slang and archaic language can be effective, but it is just as likely to give you an audience busy with wincing. ~ N.D. Wilson

When people start talking about enjambment and line endings, I always shut them up. This is not something to talk about, this is a private matter, it's up to the poet. ~ James Tate

There are plenty of servers out there. however, there are a select few of server owners that decide to make their rules as dickish as possible. What's up with that? ~ Joshua Burda

Poetry is an art of economy. ~ Matthew Shenoda

They conducted themselves according to the rules of behavior associated with an amusement park. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

Short of coming to their senses and abolishing the whole thing, we might expect that the rules for daylight saving time will remain the same for some time to come, but there is no guarantee. (We can only be glad there is no daylight loan time, or we would face decades of too much daylight, only to be faced with a few years of total darkness to make up for it. ~ Erik Naggum

My mother's rules had to do with feminine deportment, so I never played hard enough to break a toy or muddy my dress. My father's rules had to do with never shaming the family by even a hint of scandal, and not providing business rivals with an opportunity to kidnap me or throw acid in my face. ~ Bharati Mukherjee

So what if the air
in Paris smells of romance?
My shirt smells of you. ~ Pooja Nansi

The internet changed the world with data. Netiquette is making it a better place with information. NetworkEtiquette.net ~ David Chiles

It was late evening and as she came out to wear her
sneakers, she was met by not a very charitable glance of
another bhaiji. He always sat there, at the entrance, as a kind
of watchman. He commented on Nanaki's scarf and advised
her to come properly clad in a dupatta. She walked out in a
huff, heckles raised. Who was this man? Who was he to tell
her how she ought to be dressed? Whose rules were these?
In all honesty, Nanaki's visit to the gurudwara was her own
personal matter. It was more or less an aesthetic experience,
feeding a very personal need for which she felt she owed no
one an explanation. ~ Sakoon Singh

We see things like reciprocity which are fairly central to our view of ethics. But if you're talking about a set of worked-out rules on what we are supposed to do then, yes, it is a human product. ~ Peter Singer

Ah, much deluded! lay aside
Thy threats, and anger misapplied!
Art not afraid with sounds like these
To offend, where thou canst not appease?
Death is not (wherefore dream'st thou thus?)
The son of night and Erebus:
Not was of fell Erynnis born
On gulfs where Chaos rules forlorn.
But sent from God, his presence leaves,
To gather home his ripen'd sheaves,
To call encumber'd souls away
From fleshly bonds to boundless day,
(As when the winged hours excited,
And summon forth the morning light)
And each to convoy to her place
Before the Eternal Father's face. ~ John Milton

Some believe without rules and morals that we're no better than animals." He leans in, his mouth twisting seductively. "But it can be a lot of fun to be an animal. ~ Kate Stewart

When from our better selves we have too long
Been parted by the hurrying world, and droop,
Sick of its business, of its pleasures tired,
How gracious, how benign, is Solitude ~ William Wordsworth

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ME AND YOU

When I hold a rose,
I see the soft, velvety petals
and smile, because
tucked between
those precious petals
is a special gift -
the one of a fragrance,
pure and sweet.
When you hold a rose,
you see the thorns
along the stem,
and you frown
because those thorns
can bring you pain
and cause you to bleed.
I see the gift.
You see the tragedy.
More and more
I fear that one of these days
someone will hand me a rose
and all I will see
are thorns.
Talk about tragedy. ~ Lisa Schroeder

Poetry Is The Language Of Mysticism &
Discourse. It Is The Whisper In The Dark,
The Shadow In The Light. Poetry Is An Incantation From The Depths Of Your Very Soul. ~ R.M. Engelhardt

In this couple defects were multiplied, as if by a dangerous doubling; weakness fed upon itself without a counterstrength and they were trapped, defaults, mutually committed, left holes everywhere in their lives. When you read their letters to each other it is often necessary to consult the signature in order to be sure which one has done the writing. Their tone about themselves, their mood, is the fatal one of nostalgia
a passive, consuming, repetitive poetry. Sometimes one feels even its most felicitious and melodious moments are fixed, rigid in experession, and that their feelings have gradually merged with their manner, fallen under the domination of style. Even in their suffering, so deep and beyond relief, their tonal memory controls the words, shaping them into the Fitzgerald tune, always so regretful, regressive, and touched with a careful felicity. ~ Elizabeth Hardwick

Keep your whole being on the thing you are turning into words. The minute you flinch, and take your mind off this thing, and begin to look at the words and worry about them... Then your worry goes into them and they set about killing each other. So you keep going as long as you can, then look back and see what you have written. After a bit of practice and after telling yourself you are going to use any old word that comes into your head so long as it seems right, you will surprise yourself. You will read back through what you have written and you will get a shock. You will have captured a spirit, a creature. ~ Ted Hughes

The important thing is that over time, scientific progress transforms things that used to have to be dealt with in a problem-solving mode down to the pattern-recognition space; and from pattern recognition into the rules-based mode. This is the mechanism by which less-trained people are enabled to do more sophisticated things. This is always the way disruption happens. It enables a larger population of less-experienced people to do more sophisticated things. ~ Clayton Christensen

Pond(er) This [2]
I don't want to be the loudest tail wagger
in the Hello Poetry kennel ~

I just want there to be less of you
flea bag bitten bitches in heat.

Enough already,
with your bullshit barking.

SIT STILL!

Thaaat's it. Good girl!
You're a good dog, aren't you?
Let me scratch behind your ears
and give a another treat of my wit. ~ Beryl Dov

when I drive the freeways I see the soul of humanity of
my city and it's ugly, ugly, ugly: the living have choked the
heart
away. ~ Charles Bukowski

A religion is really a moral code that is expressed through legends, myths or any type of literary device in order to establish a system of beliefs, values and rules with which to regulate a culture or society ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility. ~ William Wordsworth

What, after all, is mathematics but the poetry of the mind, and what is poetry but the mathematics of the heart? ~ David Eugene Smith

Every poet ... finds himself born in the midst of prose. He has to struggle from the littleness and obstruction of an actual world into the freedom and infinitude of an ideal. ~ Thomas Carlyle

You treated me like a fool and you played with my heart, like it was one of your damn footballs. ~ Amy Andrews

The moon glistens
in her dreamy eyes
as she frolics in the dark forest.
She's got wild overgrowing in her bones,
and tangles upon tangles of midnight
weaving through her long silky hair,
this belle of the night. ~ Melody Lee

We would like a church that again asserts that God, not nations, rules the world, that the boundaries of God's kingdom transcend those of Caesar, and that the main political task of the church is the formation of people who see clearly the cost of discipleship and are willing to pay the price. ~ Stanley Hauerwas

It was not that easy to convey to him, a man much older than she was, that the world was her world, too. He had taken a risk when he invited her to join him at his table. After all, she came with a whole life and libido of her own. It had not occurred to him that she might not consider herself to be the minor character and him the major character. In this sense, she had unsettled a boundary, collapsed a social hierarchy, broken with the usual rules. ~ Deborah Levy

She dresses like she's the dean of a small liberal arts college, and she probably could be. Not only does she relish following the rules, but she's also the only one who even knows what they are. ~ Val Emmich

At the end of the night awaits the white morning: showered in sunlight. ~ Gerrit Achterberg

Pedantry and mastery are opposite attitudes toward rules. To apply a rule to the letter, rigidly, unquestioningly, in cases where it fits and in cases where it does not fit, is pedantry. [ ... ] To apply a rule with natural ease, with judgment, noticing the cases where it fits, and without ever letting the words of the rule obscure the purpose of the action or the opportunities of the situation, is mastery. ~ George Polya

Go. Think. Turn black into white.
Night into day. I am tired of thinking.
I know where it will lead me and I don't
Want to be there.
Go love. Do your thinking. ~ Walter Dean Myers

The game is pretending. It's going through the motions of life. But it's not living.

The game is for people who want rules because they're afraid to believe anything everyone else doesn't already believe. They're all scared to leave the street where they live and do something with their lives. the game is for people who want to be told what to do. Okay. Good for them, if that's what they want. ~ Laird Koenig

You and I
will be
lost and found
a thousand times
along this
cobbled
road of us. ~ Atticus Poetry

We frequently fall into error and folly, not because the true principles of action are not known, but because for a time they are not remembered; he may, therefore, justly be numbered among the benefactors of mankind who contracts the great rules of life into short sentences that may early be impressed on the memory, and taught by frequent recollection to occur habitually to the mind. ~ Samuel Johnson

God plays dice with the universe," is Ford's answer to Einstein's famous question. "But they're loaded dice. And the main objective of physics now is to find out by what rules were they loaded and how can we use them for our own ends. ~ James Gleick

You know, James Franco is one of the most interesting figures because he has no rules. He breaks all the borders. ~ Marina Abramovic

The thing you can't let go of is gravity. The reality of gravity in writing. If someone says something really mean in a sitcom, and the next wave isn't a reaction to the reality of that, you start losing relatability. In a lot of romantic comedies, they throw out the rules of life. ~ Michael Patrick King

you giver of light.
you lover of love.

you beautiful
beautiful
human being
you. ~ AVA.

There are days when that dark face is something I can think of as a friend – a primal energy that carries me forward when nothing else will – but more often than not I am face-to-face with a stranger, a companion to something I recognise as myself, sure enough, but one who knows more than I do, thinks less of danger and propriety than I ever have or will, feels a cool and amused contempt for the rules and rituals by which I live, the duties I too readily accept, the compromises I too willingly allow (p. 262) ~ John Burnside

The Correspondence-School Instructor Says Goodbye to His Poetry Students

Goodbye, lady in Bangor, who sent me
snapshots of yourself, after definitely hinting
you were beautiful; goodbye,
Miami Beach urologist, who enclosed plain
brown envelopes for the return of your very
"Clinical Sonnets"; goodbye, manufacturer
of brassieres on the Coast, whose eclogues
give the fullest treatment in literature yet
to the sagging breast motif; goodbye, you in San Quentin,
who wrote, "Being German my hero is Hitler,"
instead of "Sincerely yours," at the end of long,
neat-scripted letters extolling the Pre-Raphaelites:

I swear to you, it was just my way
of cheering myself up, as I licked
the stamped, self-addressed envelopes,
the game I had of trying to guess
which one of you, this time,
had poisoned his glue. I did care.
I did read each poem entire.
I did say everything I thought
in the mildest words I knew. And now,
in this poem, or chopped prose, no better,
I realize, than those troubled lines
I kept sending back to you,
I have to say I am relieved it is over:
at the end I could feel only pity
for that urge toward more life
your poems kept smothering in words, the smell
of which, days later, tingled in your nostrils
as new, God-given impulses
to write.

Goodbye,
you who are, for me, the postmar ~ Galway Kinnell

Higher still and higher
From the earth thou springest
Like a cloud of fire;
The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest. ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

It is the kind of stoicism which had been seen as characteristic of Anglo-Saxon poetry, perhaps nowhere better expressed than in 'The Battle of Maldon' where the most famous Saxon or English cry has been rendered - 'Courage must be the firmer, heart the bolder, spirit must be the greater, as our strength grows less'. That combination of bravery and fatalism, endurance and understatement, is the defining mood of Arhurian legend. ~ Peter Ackroyd

People with trust issues also have faith and humility issues. You can't ask the world to rise to your expectations, yet not meet that same standard for others. The notion that God didn't hurt me, but you did becomes an illogical argument for many. People who are trying to love you feel that they can never meet your definition of love because it is one sided or has rules that don't apply to you, as well. This is when the teachings of Christ become distorted. Forgiveness, compassion, love, kindness and second chances becomes a game. People in your life feel they must win it to receive it, which is far from the unconditional love God gives us. In the end, the person with trust issues find themself on a journey of perfection seeking out people incapable of mistakes like the last person or hurting their self esteem. Sadly, they miss the blessings of growth that come through humbly accepting they are also flawed and make mistakes. They miss the blessings of faith because they don't invite God into their heart, so he can help them overcome their cycle of pain. They miss the peace that comes from forgiveness and being forgiven. But most of all, they miss out on the beautiful people God brings into their life who love them so much. ~ Shannon L. Alder

The Last Invocation
At the last, tenderly,
From the walls of the powerful, fortress'd house,
From the clasp of the knitted locks - from the keep of the well-closed doors,
Let me be wafted.
Let me glide noiselessly forth;
With the key of softness unlock the locks - with a whisper,
Set ope the doors, O Soul!
Tenderly! be not impatient!
(Strong is your hold, O mortal flesh!
Strong is your hold, O love.) ~ Walt Whitman

In all great poetry there is a kind of 'kenosis' of the understanding, a self-emptying of the tongue. Here language points away from itself to something greater than itself. ~ L.P. Jacks

I always say when you see that old black-and-white footage of the rocket on the launch pad and it falls over and explodes, that's because people had slide rules. Not having the decimal point is a real drawback. You want the decimal point, take it from me. ~ Bill Nye

In all ages woman has been the source of all that is pure, unselfish, and heroic in the spirit and life of man.....poetry and fiction are based upon woman's love, and the movements of history are mainly due to the sentiments or ambitions she has inspired......there is no aspiration which any man here to-night entertains, no achievement he seeks to accomplish, no great and honorable ambition he desires to gratify, which is not directly related to either or both a mother or a wife. From the hearth-stone around which linger the recollections of our mother, from the fireside where our wife awaits us, come all the purity, all the hope, and all the courage with which we fight the battle of life. The man who is not thus inspired, who labors not so much to secure the applause of the world as the solid and more precious approval of his home, accomplishes little of good for others or of honor for himself. I close with the hope that each of us may always have near us:

'A perfect woman, nobly planned,
To warn, to comfort, and command,
And yet a spirit still, and bright
With something of an angel light. ~ Chauncey Mitchell DePew

Do I Love You"

I stand in the night and stare up at a lone star, wondering what love means. You whisper your desire - do I love you? I dare say yes. But my eyes drift back to that solitary star; my mind is plagued with intimate uncertainty.

What art thou, Love? Tell me.

I contemplate what I know - the qualities that love doth not possess. Love lifts no cruel or unkind hand, for it seeketh no harm. It shirks from constraints and demands, for tyranny is not love. A boisterous voice never crosses love's lips, for to speak with thunder chases its very presence from the heart. Love inflicts no pain, no fear, no misery, but conquers all such foes. It is said that love is not selfish, yet it does not guilt those who are. On a heart unwillingly given it stakes no claim. Love is nothing from Pandora's box; it is no evil, sin, or sorrow unleashed on this world.

My eyes glimmer as the star I gaze upon twinkles with brightness that I do not possess. I recognize my smallness - my ignorance of the One whose hands placed that star in the heavens for me.

He is love. By His own mouth He proclaimed it.

Again the whispered question hits my ear - do I love you? I dare say yes. But my eyes squint tight, wishing on a lonely star, wondering what love means. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich