Southern Appalachian Poetry Quotes

Well if this be order
give me a wheelbarruh of chaos
and a pop bottle full of shook up rattlesnakes ~ Bob Henry Baber

The snowfall totals so far have been stunning, with 22 inches of snow on Mount Leconte, Tennessee, which is in the Great Smoky Mountains, and widespread amounts of half-a-foot or more in the southern and central Appalachian Mountains. ~ Anonymous

While writing 'Cold Mountain,' I held maps of two geographies, two worlds, in my mind as I wrote. One was an early map of North Carolina. Overlaying it, though, was an imagined map of the landscape Jack travels in the southern Appalachian folktales. He's much the same Jack who climbs the beanstalk, vulnerable and clever and opportunistic. ~ Charles Frazier

There are two things I am afraid of. One is dying young. The other is Johnny Monroe. ~ Susan Gabriel

In the Deep South, God is a cotton king,
Trussed up in plantation whites and powdered over smooth
with a little bit of talcum from Momma's compact.
He's the Georgia dust that gets on everything, in everything,
Caking the soles of bare feet
sifting through cracks in church pews,
and catching in your lover's eyelashes.

In the Deep South, the Devil is a beautiful boy
who swears and cheats at billiards on Sunday.
He is the one who reaches up your skirt,
pulls out the prayers your were saving for someday
and lights them on fire with his tongue.
He will sing hymns while feasting on your forfeit heart,
call you blessed while peeling away dignity like stockings,
then drag you out in front of the church to be stoned.

In the Deep South, the Holy Spirit is an old woman
with hands brown and gnarled as the nuts she boils
and a voice soft and dark as the Appalachian sky.
She is the swamp kingdom matriarch children are sent to
when sins need to be wished away like warts,
the presence of whom straightens the spines of wayward souls
and coaxes a "Yes Ma'am" from the devil's own.

In the Deep South, Jesus is a mixed-race child
with drops of destiny mingled into his blood
and the names of the saints tattooed along his spine.
He has his mother's bearing, one that wears suffering nobly,
and baleful eyes that speak of the sins of his forefathers.
S.T. Gibson

The first spoken word poem I ever wrote was when I was 14 and I wrote it because I was accidentally signed up for a teen poetry slam. Because I loved poetry I said that I'd try it out. ~ Sarah Kay

Prose is when all the lines except the last go on to the end. Poetry is when some of them fall short of it. ~ Jeremy Bentham

I do not know of anything in modern poetry as violently hostile to contemporary life as was the poetry of T. S. Eliot, which so perfectly fitted the mood of the young people between the two wars. I also find much more benevolence towards humanity in younger historians than there was in Spengler or in Toynbee. Still, it is not difficult to sense the disgust of the intellectuals at the new prosperous working class, 'with their eyes glued to the television screen,' who have become indifferent to radical ideas. ~ Dennis Gabor

Happy Readings Y'all! ~ Lia Gerber

When the silence of the night becomes the chanting of poetry, the departure of con-cavity ~ Goitsemang Mvula

I try to presume that no one is interested in me. And I think experience bears that out. No one's interested in the experiences of a stranger - let's put it that way. And then you have difficulty combined with presumptuousness, which is the most dire trouble with poetry. ~ Billy Collins

I read poetry every day. I love the boiled down essence of poetry. I look for poetry in prose. In a way that evocative. ~ Andre Dubus

One sort of optional thing you might do is to realize there are six seasons instead of four. The poetry of four seasons is all wrong for this part of the planet, and this may explain why we are so depressed so much of the time. I mean, Spring doesn't feel like Spring a lot of the time, and November is all wrong for Fall and so on. Here is the truth about the seasons: Spring is May and June! What could be springier than May and June? Summer is July and August. Really hot, right? Autumn is September and October. See the pumpkins? Smell those burning leaves. Next comes the season called "Locking." That is when Nature shuts everything down. November and December aren't Winter. They're Locking. Next comes Winter, January and February. Boy! Are they ever cold! What comes next? Not Spring. Unlocking comes next. What else could April be? ~ Kurt Vonnegut

I love to compare different time frames. Poetry can evoke the time of the subject. By a very careful choice of words you can evoke an era, completely throw the poem into a different time scale. ~ Robert Morgan

It felt like I had a thousand packs of Strawberry Pop Rocks simultaneously detonating in my chest, and I dilated at least eight centimeters! ~ Piper Faust

I am scared to look inside me, Except me everyone else is in here, And they said education was the cure, Now of not even one thing that I am sure… ~ Piyush Rohankar

Car radios blared in the night, generally pitting a gang in favor of Neil Young's "Southern Man," which chastised the South for its flagrant racism, against those who preferred Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama," which chastised Neil Young for chastising the South and which praised the blatantly racist Alabama governor George Wallace. ~ Brent Hendricks

The world is full of beautiful places. Let your heart be one of them. ~ Jenim Dibie

The bear and I --
we rise like a windstorm
to witness these old trees talk. ~ Vivian Demuth

Even through the smoke,
you are still the most beautiful thing
in this city and I, well, I am still
the last thing you'd save in a fire. ~ Danabelle Gutierrez

The feeling of awed wonder that science can give us is one of the highest experiences of which the human psyche is capable. It is a deep aesthetic passion to rank with the finest that music and poetry can deliver. It is truly one of the things that make life worth living and it does so, if anything, more effectively if it convinces us that the time we have for living is quite finite. ~ Richard Dawkins

It is beautiful to express love and even more beautiful to feel it. ~ Dejan Stojanovic

Apollo was god of poetry as well as archery, and I'd heard him recite in person. I'd almost rather get shot by an arrow ~ Rick Riordan

i hardened under the last loss. it took something human out of me. i used to be so deeply emotional i'd crumble on demand. but now the water has made its exit. of course i care about the ones around me. i'm just struggling to show it. a wall is getting in the way. i used to dream of being so strong nothing could shake me. now. i am. so strong. that nothing shakes me. and all i dream is to soften.
- numbness ~ Rupi Kaur

You not only are hunted by others, you unknowingly hunt yourself. ~ Dejan Stojanovic

There is a time for reciting poems and a time for fists. ~ Roberto Bolano

So goes the hard way- the (fall a)part way-the (break a) heart way. ~ Kami Garcia

far noh mattah wat dey say,
come wat may,
we are here to stay
inna Inglan,
inna disya time yah... ~ Linton Kwesi Johnson

They will smile, as they always do when they plan a major attack late in the night. ~ Dejan Stojanovic

If we ask a vague question, such as, 'What is poetry?' we expect a vague answer, such as, 'Poetry is the music of words,' or 'Poetry is the linguistic correction of disorder.' ~ A.R. Ammons

It is necessary to create constraints, in order to invent freely. In poetry the constraint can be imposed by meter, foot, rhyme, by what has been called the "verse according to the ear." ... In fiction, the surrounding world provides the constraint. This has nothing to do with realism ... A completely unreal world can be constructed, in which asses fly and princesses are restored to life by a kiss; but that world, purely possible and unrealistic, must exist according to structures defined at the outset (we have to know whether it is a world where a princess can be restored to life only by the kiss of a prince, or also by that of a witch, and whether the princess's kiss transforms only frogs into princes or also, for example, armadillos). ~ Umberto Eco

So What Did You Think of His Poetry? {Couplet}
He was a humdrum poet who left his Hallmark upon the world;
in his poems an umbrella never opened, they all magically unfurled. ~ Beryl Dov

At some point you have to believe that the inadequacies of the words you use will be transcended by the faith with which you use them. You have to believe that poetry has some reach into reality itself, or you have to go silent. ~ Christian Wiman

The pastoral task with words is not communication but communion - the healing and restoration and creation of love relationships between God and his fighting children and our fought-over creation. Poetry uses words in and for communion.
This is hard work and requires alertness. The language of our time is in terrible condition. It is used carelessly and cynically. Mostly it is a tool for propaganda, whether secular or religious. Every time badly used and abused language is carried by pastors into prayers and preaching and direction, the word of God is cheapened. We cannot use a bad means to a good end. ~ Eugene H. Peterson

Music has a poetry of its own, and that poetry is called melody. ~ Joshua Logan

Words

Be careful of words,
even the miraculous ones.
For the miraculous we do our best,
sometimes they swarm like insects
and leave not a sting but a kiss.
They can be as good as fingers.
They can be as trusty as the rock
you stick your bottom on.
But they can be both daisies and bruises.
Yet I am in love with words.
They are doves falling out of the ceiling.
They are six holy oranges sitting in my lap.
They are the trees, the legs of summer,
and the sun, its passionate face.
Yet often they fail me.
I have so much I want to say,
so many stories, images, proverbs, etc.
But the words aren't good enough,
the wrong ones kiss me.
Sometimes I fly like an eagle
but with the wings of a wren.
But I try to take care
and be gentle to them.
Words and eggs must be handled with care.
Once broken they are impossible
things to repair. ~ Anne Sexton

And to a start and to an end, If ever you exist except inside my head, Know that time ceaselessly walks uninvited, Towards an ending for a new beginning of another end… ~ Piyush Rohankar

We are all debts owed to death. ~ Simonides

I have my Poetry 180 project, which I've made my main project. We encourage high schools, because that's really where, for most people, poetry dies off and gets buried under other adolescent pursuits. ~ Billy Collins

Let it never be said / there can be a Heaven / without fresh bread. ~ Glenn Logan Reitze

Seasonal flu is now a pandemic that lasts for years and years because you've got so many people that it's jumping back between northern and southern hemispheres and moving itself around the world. By the time it gets back to where it started, it's changed sufficiently so that people are no longer immune. ~ Nathan Wolfe

With each kiss that we shared we experienced the meaning of love. With the passing glances of passion we surrendered our hearts to the silence of the storm of intoxication. Holding on to each other till the roots of our souls have become entwined in the eternal desire of each other." Poem: "The Silence of Love ~ Anthony F. Rando