Singapore Pioneer Poet Quotes

Once
There was a quiet island,
With a name.
You must believe me
When I say that sunlight,
Impure but beautiful,
Broke upon the bay, silvered
The unrepentant, burning moon. ~ Edwin Thumboo

In the open world, all is change, all is life, all is movement. And he whoever moves and journeys with this life movement, dancing and playing on his flute as he goes, he is the true Renouncer. He is the true disciple of the minstrel Poet. ~ Rabindranath Tagore

The poet never asks for admiration; he wants to be believed. ~ Jean Cocteau

I am the scroll of the poet behind which samurai swords are being sharpened. ~ Lester Cole

VALENTINE: Are you talking about Lord Byron, the poet?
BERNARD: No, you fucking idiot, we're talking about Lord Byron, the chartered accountant. ~ Tom Stoppard

I told her the clitoris is like a Bonsai tree that needs constant tending and the g-spot is an unexplored island waiting to have a flag pinned on its peak. She laughed and said I should be a poet. Then we went to bed and crossed the sheets as if it were a new continent we had just discovered. ~ Chloe Thurlow

I was too slow a mover to be a boxer. It was much easier to be a poet. ~ T. S. Eliot

Understand the poem not the poet. ~ Christina Strigas

A German or a Russian mamaloschen (mother tongue) pedigree made for two wildly different translations of the same verse by the American Yiddish poet H. Leyvik.

"Dos turemdike lebn in der turemdike shtot", translated "The towering life of the towering city" (Yiddish turem, "tower," of German origin) became in another version "The imprisoned life of the prison city" (via turme, "prison", from Russian).

I discovered this old "plot" in a recent lecture, a volume on American Yiddish Poetry, by Benjamin and Barbara Harshav. One of those gentle epiphanies that only apparently obscure footnotes or references could reveal.

In a frivolous gesture, I concocted an improbable rendition based on both translations, a slice of contemporary universal metropolitan spleen:

The imprisoned life of the towering city. ~ Harshav

I wanted an imagination that would inhabit a world of fact, descend like a shining light upon the ordinary life of Eden Street, and not force me to exist in an "elsewhere". I wanted the light to shine upon the pigeons of Grey Street, the plum trees in our garden, the two japonica bushes (one red, one yellow), our pine plantations and gully, our summer house, our lives, and our home, the world of Oamaru, the kingdom by the sea. I refused to accept that if I were to fulfil my secret ambition to be a poet, I should spend my imaginative life among the nightingales instead of among the wax-eyes and the fantails. I wanted my life to be the "other world". ~ Janet Frame

Though critics may bow to art, and I am its own true lover,
It is not art, but heart, which wins the wide world over.

Though smooth be the heartless prayer, no ear in Heaven will mind it,
And the finest phrase falls dead if there is no feeling behind it.

Though perfect the player's touch, little, if any, he sways us,
Unless we feel his heart throb through the music he plays us.

Though the poet may spend his life in skilfully rounding a measure,
Unless he writes from a full, warm heart he gives us little pleasure.

So it is not the speech which tells, but the impulse which goes with the saying;
And it is not the words of the prayer, but the yearning back of the praying.

It is not the artist's skill which into our soul comes stealing
With a joy that is almost pain, but it is the player's feeling.

And it is not the poet's song, though sweeter than sweet bells chiming,
Which thrills us through and through, but the heart which beats under the rhyming.

And therefore I say again, though I am art's own true lover,
That it is not art, but heart, which wins the wide world over. ~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox

I grew up writing. It was very natural in my household. My father was a poet, and his mother had been a novelist back in Hungary. I don't think I really thought about it being my career until high school, which is still pretty early, but it was a while there of just assuming this was something everyone did all day long. ~ Rebecca Makkai

A fool, for example, thinks Shakespeare a great poet ... yet the fool has never read Shakespeare. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

If you know something to be true
Say it once
Those who can, will receive it
Only the foolish believe they can justify a truth to a court of fools
Honor the truth
For even before a just judge
A lie can be proven to be credible
On the other hand
Truth will never require a woman or man's justification
It can stand alone
Whether torn and ridiculed
Truth stands
Even after all has been stripped away ~ Gregory C. Warner

He was a cowboy with the soul of a poet. To this day, he is the most American American I've ever met. ~ Seth Grahame-Smith

Exact science and its practical movements are no checks on the greatest poet, but always his encouragement and support ... The sailor and traveller, the anatomist, chemist, astronomer, geologist, phrenologist, spiritualist, mathematician, historian and lexicographer are not poets, but they are the lawgivers of poets and their construction underlies the structure of every perfect poem. ~ Walt Whitman

Every poet puts a part of their soul in each of their poems.
~ Jennifer Owen

The destiny of you and me is written,
Yes it is written…! ~ Md. Ziaul Haque

I haven't seen any poet in this country behave nearly as rudely as Newt Gingrich or Bill O'Reilly. I'm not asking these people to approve of everyone's manners. I don't feel obliged to defend the manners of every poet who submits a poem to my web site. That's not my job. My job is to provide them with an opportunity to speak from the heart. If there's not much in the heart and if the mouth is running wild, that's not my problem. ~ Sam Hamill

To my way of thinking the function of the poet is to make us aware of what we know and don't know we know. ~ William S. Burroughs

Being a pioneer can be damn lonely, too early, no money, tough, endless, stupid," Samwer said. "And that healed us. Since then, we basically say, Fuck you. We don't care whether you think we are not smart enough to invent something. ~ Frank Sennett

Time changes nothing, girl, but the size of your underwear ... and hopefully your hairdo. ~ Minton Sparks

English is now ours. We have colonized it, too. ~ Gemino Abad

There is an old Latin quotation in regard to the poet which says 'Poeta nascitur non fit' the translation of which is - the poet is born, not made. ~ Joseph Devlin

In an instant, the law was transformed: from the last passenger on the safe-haven bandwagon to a pioneer into uncharted territory. For the first time in American history, it was not only legal to relinquish a baby; in Nebraska, it was okay to abandon any child of any age for any reason at any time - with the full protection of the law. ~ Wil S. Hylton

Life is a great poetry.
To live it at its best
Write a love story
And be a great poet.

Life is a great poetry.
To love it at its best
Love everyone earnestly,
Without judging for a crest.

Life is a great poetry.
To live it at its best
Create a great history
Before going for the rest.

Life is a great poetry.
To paint it at its best
Through colors openly
As if, life is not a test.

Life is a great poetry.
To enjoy it at its best
Enjoy a golden dusk party
When birds return to nest. ~ Debasish Mridha

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

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

Jesus of Nazareth could have chosen simply to express Himself in moral precepts; but like a great poet He chose the form of the parable, wonderful short stories that entertained and clothed the moral precept in an eternal form. It is not sufficient to catch man's mind, you must also catch the imaginative faculties of his mind. ~ Dudley Nichols

Here's how I used to think
you made a book:
a poet comes along,
mouth half open, inspired,
then suddenly the idiot bursts into song -
fancy that! ~ Vladimir Mayakovsky

Waiting for dusk and someone dear to come and whip him down the street, gently home ~ Donald Justice