Spanish Poetry Quotes

I didn't ever consider poetry the province exclusively of English and American literature and I discovered a great amount in reading Polish poetry and other Eastern European poetry and reading Russian poetry and reading Latin American and Spanish poetry and I've always found models in those other poetries of poets who could help me on my path. ~ Edward Hirsch

I carry on in this island whipped by typhoons
Chained to the sea as the waves
Crash against the dam, and I proclaim you.
I scream, until hoarse, your beloved name.

- José Manuel Cardona, from Birnam Wood (Salmon Poetry, 2018), translated by Hélène Cardona ~ José Manuel Cardona, Hélène Cardona

I would like to spend more time with Spanish poetry. I know French better than Spanish, but Spanish was my first language, and my father spoke it to us. ~ Helen Vendler

I wrote poetry, which got me into lyrics. Stevie Wonder, Carole King, Elton John pulled me into pop. I started singing with a band - just for fun - when I was 17. And pretty soon, I was thinking I could sing pop in English as well as Spanish. ~ Gloria Estefan

When we were 15, my girlfriend Ruth Kaplan and I applied to the Universidad Ibero-Americana in Mexico City. We were accepted into a program that placed us with a lovely Mexican family. We lived with them for six weeks while studying Spanish poetry and Mexican anthropology. ~ Mary Doria Russell

Lao-tzu advised, "As soon as you have a thought, laugh at it," because reality is not what we think. We perceive the world through a window colored by beliefs, interpretations, and associations. We see things not as they are but as we are. The same brain that enables us to contemplate philosophy, solve math equations, and create poetry also generates a stream of static known as discursive thoughts, which seem to arise at random, bubbling up into our awareness. Such mental noise is a natural phenomenon, no more of a problem than the dreams that appear in the sleep state. Therefore, our schooling aims not to struggle with random thoughts but to transcend them in the present moment, where no thoughts exist, only awareness. Our mind's liberation awaits not in some imagined future but here and now. ~ Dan Millman

What will they say about my poetry who never touched my blood? Que diran de mi poesia los que no tocaron mi sangre? ~ Pablo Neruda

In a way, we [poets] are listeners. I go to poetry because I don't have the words." - ~ Joy Harjo

Every feeling hath been shaken;
Pride, which not a world could bow,
Bows to thee - by thee forsaken,
Even my soul forsakes me now. ~ George Gordon Byron

A sky
full
of stars
and he
was staring
at her.

- ATTICUS ~ Atticus Poetry

From the union of power and money,
from the union of power and secrecy,
from the union of government and science,
from the union of government and art,
from the union of science and money,
from the union of ambition and ignorance,
from the union of genius and war,
from the union of outer space and inner vacuity,
the Mad Farmer walks quietly away. ~ Wendell Berry

I'm perfectly happy when I look out at an audience and it's all women. I always think it's kind of odd, but then, more women than men, I think, read and write poetry. ~ Diane Wakoski

No one is a poet from eight to twelve and from two to six. Whoever is a poet is one always, and continually assaulted by poetry. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

I am grown old, and have possibly lost a great deal of that fire, which formerly made me love fire in others at any rate, and however attended with smoke: but now I must have all sense, and cannot, for the sake of five righteous lines, forgive a thousand absurd ones. ~ Lord Chesterfield

If God could transcribe my heart, it'd still read "I love you". ~ Jenim Dibie

She had a mind like a box of fireworks and hands that played recklessly with matches. ~ Michael Faudet

The worst thing," he told me,
"is bitterness, people end up so
bitter. ~ Charles Bukowski

we are all strangers / bound by the same spirits ~ Colleen J. McElroy

Verses which do not teach men new and moving truths do not deserve to be read. ~ Voltaire

We write because the blank piece of paper and the pen are there. We write because this is our addiction and we are proud of it. Our habit, our drug, our crutch. Whatever you wish to call it. We write because since an early age we felt it deep in our souls and in our bones. The poem must be written, the story must be told and the new myths and Gods are waiting for you to bring them forth from out of the darkness and to bring them into the light of being. You are a creator, so create. You are the writer. So write. ~ R.M. Engelhardt

What we call life is only talk of nature. ~ Dejan Stojanovic

When the Divine Artist would produce a poem, He plants a germ of it in a human soul, and out of that soul the poem springs and grows as from the rose-tree the rose. ~ James A. Garfield

The idea that a poem was a made thing stayed with me, and I decided then that I wanted to be an artist, not just a diarist. So I put myself through a kind of apprenticeship in writing poetry, and I understood even then that my practice as a poet was deeply related to my reading. ~ Edward Hirsch

Once a hunter met a lion near the hungry critter's lair,
and the way that lion mauled him was decidedly unfair;
but the hunter never whimpered when the surgeons, with their thread,
sewed up forty-seven gashes in his mutilated head;
and he showed the scars in triumph, and they gave him pleasant fame,
and he always blessed the lion that had camped upon his frame.
Once that hunter, absent minded, sat upon a hill of ants,
and about a million bit him, and you should have seen him dance!
And he used up lots of language of a deep magenta tint,
and apostrophized the insects in a style unfit to print.
And it's thus with worldly troubles;
when the big ones come along, we serenely go to meet them, feeling valiant, bold and strong, but the weary little worries with their poisoned stings and smarts, put the lid upon our courage, make us gray, and break our hearts. ~ Walt Mason

My mind repeats all the mistakes I've made, like a bad movie reminding me of all the things that cause me so much doubt.
There are things that go wrong in my life, like a roller coaster that twists and bends. People say that this is just how life goes. But too often I am wondering if maybe it's just me. Too often I am thinking about how often my doubt shows. ~ Courtney Peppernell

Daydreaming is one of the key sources of poetry - a poem often starts as a daydream that finds its way into language - and walking seems to bring a different sort of alertness, an associative kind of thinking, a drifting state of mind. ~ Edward Hirsch

What is the finding of love,
but a voice answering a voice? ~ D. Antoinette Foy

Unsightly

If I strip my heart naked, you'll see all the unsightly scars, I'm afraid. ~ John Mark Green

Poetry is meant to be heard. ~ Mary Oliver

Lyric poetry is, of course, musical in origin. I do know that what happened to poetry in the twentieth century was that it began to be written for the page. When it's a question of typography, why not? Poets have done beautiful things with typography - Apollinaire's 'Calligrammes,' that sort of thing. ~ James Fenton

There are some griefs so loud
They could bring down the sky,
And there are griefs so still
None knows how deep they lie,
Endured, never expended.
There are old griefs so proud
They never speak a word;
They never can be mended.
And these nourish the will
And keep it iron-hard. ~ May Sarton

For most of human history, 'literature,' both fiction and poetry, has been narrated, not written - heard, not read. So fairy tales, folk tales, stories from the oral tradition, are all of them the most vital connection we have with the imaginations of the ordinary men and women whose labor created our world. ~ Angela Carter

"Filipino" is the Spanish side of our history. The islands were named after King Felipe, so we became known as Filipinos. It's a brand, it's a name. But we're Malays. Before colonizers came to our shores, we were Malays. My praxis is about being Malay - the struggle of the Malays before we became Filipinos. ~ Lav Diaz

Like two r's trapped in a spanish songbook, tilli and max lurked in their shoebox castle, waiting to be rolled. ~ Tom Robbins

In this universe there are no time machines or keys that can turn hearts back around. ~ Sarah Tregay

The room was the poem, the day I was in. Oh Christ. What writes my poem is the second ring, inner or outer. Poetry is just the performance of it. These little things, whether I write them or not. That's the score. The thing of great value is you. Where you are, glowing and fading, while you live. ~ Eileen Myles

And so it is in poetry also: all this love of curious French metres like the Ballade, the Villanelle, the Rondel; all this increased value laid on elaborate alliterations, and on curious words and refrains, such as you will find in Dante Rossetti and Swinburne, is merely the attempt to perfect flute and viol and trumpet through which the spirit of the age and the lips of the poet may blow the music of their many messages. And so it has been with this romantic movement of ours: it is a reaction against the empty conventional workmanship, the lax execution of previous poetry and painting, showing itself in the work of such men as Rossetti and Burne-Jones by a far greater splendour of colour, a far more intricate wonder of design than English imaginative art has shown before. In Rossetti's poetry and the poetry of Morris, Swinburne and Tennyson a perfect precision and choice of language, a style flawless and fearless, a seeking for all sweet and precious melodies and a sustaining consciousness of the musical value of each word are opposed to that value which is merely intellectual. In this respect they are one with the romantic movement of France of which not the least characteristic note was struck by Theophile Gautier's advice to the young poet to read his dictionary every day, as being the only book worth a poet's reading. ~ Oscar Wilde

But I am not political in the current events sense, and I have never wanted anyone to read my poetry that way. ~ Diane Wakoski

Writing poetry is about learning to pare down the poem to the most essential words. Every word used has to be crucial to the poem. ~ Harley King

Armenian Cognac

A bottle of cognac from Yerevan
is on my kitchen table
as closed as that history
and as silent
If I broke it down I'd lose a hundred years
of love
and if I opened it the ancestors
hanging here in black and white
would come down from the walls
to have a glass with me
I know a history that's been forgotten
and I know why that bottle of cognac
stands with such singular pride....

If I broke it now I'd lose a hundred years
of my people's history ~ Najwan Darwish

The morning light splits my eyes into two, Still confused if the day is worth getting up to, I wonder what new did I ever do? Except staring blankly into the blue, And making stories inside my head, None of which shall ever come true… ~ Piyush Rohankar

He had always thought that a Native American should have shot Robert Frost for the outrageous lie of the line "The land was ours before we were the land's." What a scandal that would be, America's best-loved geezer falling in a battle over poetry. ~ Jim Harrison

And blue-lung'd combers lumbered to the kill. ~ Robert Lowell

I sanctify the ground and say fuck it
I say fuck it in a way that does not invite death
I say fuck it and fall down no new holes
And I ride an unwinged horse
And I unbecome myself
And I strip my poison suit
And wear my crown of fuck its ~ Melissa Broder

What can be explained is not poetry. ~ W.B.Yeats

Sweetest smile is made saddest tear-drop! ~ Edwin Arnold