c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
I went down not long agoto the Mad River, under the willowsI knelt and drank from that crumpled flow, call itwhat madness you will, there's a sicknessworse than the risk of death and that'sforgetting what we should never forget.Tecumseh lived here.The wounds of the pastare ignored, but hang onlike the litter that snags among the yellow branches,newspapers and plastic bags, after the rains.Where are the Shawnee now?Do you know? Or would you have to write to Washington, and even then,whatever they said,would you believe it? SometimesI would like to paint my body red and go intothe glittering snowto die.His name meant Shooting Star.From Mad River country north to the borderhe gathered the tribesand armed them one more time. He vowedto keep Ohio and it took himover twenty years to fail.After the bloody and final fighting, at Thames,it was over, excepthis body could not be found,and you can do whatever you want with that, sayhis people came in the black leaves of the nightand hauled him to a secret grave, or thathe turned into a little boy again, and leapedinto a birch canoe and wentrowing home down the rivers. Anywaythis much I'm sure of: if we meet him, we'll know it,he will still beso angry.
— Mary Oliver
The first year was like icing. Then the cake started to show through …
— John Ashbery
Historical sense and poetic sense should not, in the end, be contradictory, for if poetry is the little myth we make, history is the big myth we live, and in our living, constantly remake.
— Robert Penn Warren
Isn't joyful or painful this pain in which I rejoice
— Fernando Pessoa, Poems of Fernando Pessoa
The kind of poem I produced in those days was hardly anything more than a sign I made of being alive, of passing or having passed, or hoping to pass, through certain intense human emotions. It was a phenomenon of orientation rather than of art, thus comparable to stripes of paint on a roadside rock or to a pillared heap of stones marking a mountain trail. But then, in a sense, all poetry is positional: to try to express one's position in regard to the universe embraced by consciousness, is an immemorial urge. Tentacles, not wings, are Apollo's natural members. Vivian Bloodmark, a philosophical friend of mine, in later years, used to say that while the scientist sees everything that happens in one point of space, the poet feels everything that happens in one point of time.
— Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory
Ah, the freshness in the face of leaving a task undone!To be remiss is to be positively out in the country!What a refuge it is to be completely unreliable!I can breathe easier now that the appointments are behind me.I missed them all, through deliberate negligence,Having waited for the urge to go, which I knew wouldn’t come.I’m free, and against organized, clothed society.I’m naked and plunge into the water of my imagination.It’s too late to be at either of the two meetings where I should have been at the same time,Deliberately at the same time...No matter, I’ll stay here dreaming verses and smiling in italics.This spectator aspect of life is so amusing!I can’t even light the next cigarette... If it’s an action,It can wait for me, along with the others, in the nonmeeting called life.
— Fernando Pessoa, Fernando Pessoa and Co.: Selected Poems
The VagabondGive to me the life I love,Let the lave go by me,Give the jolly heaven aboveAnd the byway nigh me.Bed in the bush with stars to see,Bread I dip in the river -There's the life for a man like me,There's the life for ever.Let the blow fall soon or late,Let what will be o'er me;Give the face of earth aroundAnd the road before me.Wealth I seek not, hope nor love,Nor a friend to know me;All I seek, the heaven aboveAnd the road below me.Or let autumn fall on meWhere afield I linger,Silencing the bird on tree,Biting the blue finger.White as meal the frosty field -Warm the fireside haven -Not to autumn will I yield,Not to winter even!Let the blow fall soon or late,Let what will be o'er me;Give the face of earth around,And the road before me.Wealth I ask not, hope nor love,Nor a friend to know me;All I ask, the heaven aboveAnd the road below me.
— Robert Louis Stevenson
Song of MyselfI have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the beginning and the end, But I do not talk of the beginning or the end. There was never any more inception than there is now, Nor any more youth or age than there is now, And will never be any more perfection than there is now, Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.
— Walt Whitman
The BALLPOINT PENGUINS, black and white, Do little else but write and write.Although they've nothing much to say, They write and write it anyway....
— Jack Prelutsky, Behold the Bold Umbrellaphant: And Other Poems
We wrote our names in the sandYou crossed mine out: I can't getback to the way I was.
— Kiera Woodhull, Chaos of the Mind
I have brushed my teeth.This day and I are even.
— Vera Pavlova
There is nothing like scrubbing toilets for a living to make you question the choices you have made in life.
— Raegan Butcher, Rusty String Quartet
Our friends through cables and computer screens are as real as the light and sound waves we alter through thought.
— Belinda Subraman, Wet Moments
An anaesthetic is a poet-killer.
— Lewis Hyde, Alcohol and Poetry: John Berryman and the Booze Talking
Love's language is imprecise,fits more like mittens than gloves.
— Jeannine Atkins, Borrowed Names: Poems About Laura Ingalls Wilder, Madam C.J. Walker, Marie Curie, and Their Daughters
holding a tiny dixie cup in my hand makes me feel like a giant human being that can crush things
— Brandon Scott Gorrell
I have defined poetry as a 'passionate pursuit of the Real.
— Czesław Miłosz
And this gray spirit yearning in desireTo follow knowledge like a sinking star,Beyond the utmost bound of human thought. 
— Alfred Tennyson
I searched for my own heartand long after I had lost my wayin the days trailing past with their foliagein the aloof sky blue with distanceI thought I'd find my heartwhere I'd kept your eyes two brown butterfliesand I saw the swallows swoopand shadows starlings
— Ingrid Jonker
Here is Menard's own intimate forest: 'Now I am traversed by bridle paths, under the seal of sun and shade...I live in great density...Shelter lures me. I slump down into the thick foliage...In the forest, I am my entire self. Everything is possible in my heart just as it is in the hiding places in ravines. Thickly wooded distance separates me from moral codes and cities.
— Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space
Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art--Not in lone splendour hung aloft the nightAnd watching, with eternal lids apart,Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite.
— John Keats
All war is based in deception (cfr. Sun Tzu, “The Art of War”).Definition of deception: “The practice of deliberately making somebody believe things that are not true. An act, a trick or device entended to deceive somebody”.Thus, all war is based in metaphor.All war necessarily perfects itself in poetry.Poetry (since indefinable) is the sense of seduction.Therefore, all war is the storytelling of seduction, and seduction is the nature of war.
— Pola Oloixarac, Las teorías salvajes
The poets are supposed to liberate the words – not chain them in phrases. Who told the poets they were supposed to think? Poets are meant to sing and to make words sing. Writers don't own their words. Since when do words belong to anybody? 'Your very own words,' indeed! And who are you?
— Brion Gysin, Brion Gysin Let the Mice In
that your power of commandwith simple language wasone of the magnificent things ofour century.(from the poem: result)
— Charles Bukowski
Poetry's work is the clarification and magnification of being.
— Jane Hirshfield
Take the time to write. You can do your life's work in half an hour a day.
— Robert Hass
And wonder, dread and warhave lingered in that landwhere loss and love in turnhave held the upper hand.
— Simon Armitage, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
But for us the road unfurls itself, we don't stop walking, we know there is far to go. 
— Denise Levertov
Sufilere sohbet gerek Ahilere ahret gerek Mecnunlara Leyla gerek Bana seni gerek seni
— Yunus Emre
English:Ô, take this eager dance you fool, don’t brandish your stick at me. I have several reasons to travel on, on to the endless sea: I have lost my love. I’ve drunk my purse. My girl has gone, and left me rags to sleep upon. These old man’s gloves conceal the hands with which I’ve killed but one!Francais: Idiot, prends cette danse ardente, au lieu de tendre ton bâton.J'en ai des raisons de voyager encore sur la mer infinie: J'ai perdu l'amour et j'ai bu ma bourse.Ma belle m'a quitté, j'ai ses haillons pour m'abriter. Mes gants de vieillard cachent les mains d'un fameux assassin!
— Roman Payne, The Basement Trains
Paris and HelenHe called her: golden dawnShe called him: the wind whistlesHe called her: heart of the skyShe called him: message bringerHe called her: mother of pearl barley woman, rice provider, millet basket, corn maid, flax princess, all-maker, weefShe called him: fawn, roebuck, stag, courage, thunderman, all-in-green, mountain strider keeper of forests, my-love-ridesHe called her: the tree isShe called him: bird dancingHe called her: who stands, has stood, will always standShe called him: arriverHe called her: the heart and the womb are similarShe called him: arrow in my heart.
— Judy Grahn, The Work of a Common Woman: The Collected Poetry of Judy Grahn, 1964-1977
Man would not be man if his dreams did not exceed his grasp. ... Like John Donne, man lies in a close prison, yet it is dear to him. Like Donne's, his thoughts at times overleap the sun and pace beyond the body. If I term humanity a slime mold organism it is because our present environment suggest it. If I remember the sunflower forest it is because from its hidden reaches man arose. The green world is his sacred center. In moments of sanity he must still seek refuge there. ... If I dream by contrast of the eventual drift of the star voyagers through the dilated time of the universe, it is because I have seen thistledown off to new worlds and am at heart a voyager who, in this modern time, still yearns for the lost country of his birth.
— Loren Eiseley, The Invisible Pyramid
Impatience kills quickly.
— Katerina Stoykova Klemer
The very essence of I is being killed by You.
— Santosh Kalwar, The Warrior
He remembers which sisterI like least and askshow she is doing.(lines 9-11 of the poem 'Divorce')
— Carrie Etter, The Tethers
Poets to ComePOETS to come! orators, singers, musicians to come!Not to-day is to justify me, and answer what I am for;But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater than before known,Arouse! Arousefor you must justify meyou must answer.I myself but write one or two indicative words for the future,I but advance a moment, only to wheel and hurry back in the darkness.I am a man who, sauntering along, without fully stopping, turns a casual look upon you, and then averts his face,Leaving it to you to prove and define it,Expecting the main things from you.
— Walt Whitman
...what the Man-Moth fears most he must do..
— Elizabeth Bishop
I've given offense by saying I'd as soon write free verse as play tennis with the net down.
— Robert Frost
In this quiet place on a quiet streetwhere no one ever finds usgently, lovingly, freedom gives back our pain.--from poem In a Quiet Place on a Quiet Street
— Aberjhani, I Made My Boy Out of Poetry
We speak in (rich) monotones. Our poetry is haunted by the music it has left behind. Orpheus shrinks to a poet when he looks back, with the impatience of reason, on a music stronger than death.
— George Steiner, Errata: An Examined Life
Maybe if I could slip into Sylvia's mind, sort out the spices in her rack, alphabetize them and dust them off. Maybe then I'd understand how it's the little things that pull you under.
— Kelli Russell Agodon
A wind starts to blow, without feelings,A song falls in love, without singing,A life will begin in melodies of the strings,May you find all pleasure of the light,God bless, Warrior of Light!
— Santosh Kalwar
One could say that artists are people who think naturally in highly patterned ways.
— Helen Vendler, Poems, Poets, Poetry: An Introduction and Anthology
O rose, you look sick.O rose, wake up and sing.
— Santosh Kalwar, I Am Dead Man Alive
A writer is not so much someone who has something to say as he is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things he would not have thought of if he had not started to say them.
— William Stafford
Therefore, since the world has stillMuch good, but much less good than ill,And while the sun and moon endureLuck's a chance, but trouble's sure,I'd face it as a wise man would,And train for ill and not for good.
— A.E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad
Poetry: three mismatched shoes at the entrance of a dark alley.
— Charles Simic, Dime-Store Alchemy
Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beastie,O, what a panic's in thy breastie! 
— Robert Burns
This is the creature there has never been.They never knew it, and yet, none the less,they loved the way it moved, its suppleness,its neck, its very gaze, mild and serene.Not there, because they loved it, it behavedas though it were. They always left some space.And in that clear unpeopled space they savedit lightly reared its head, with scarce a traceof not being there. They fed it, not with corn,but only with the possibilityof being. And that was able to confersuch strength, its brow put forth a horn. One horn.within the silver mirror and in her.
— Rainer Maria Rilke
And I or you pocketless of a dime, may purchase the pick of the earth.
— Walt Whitman, Song of Myself
You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.
— Mario Cuomo
One way poetry connects is across time. . . . Some echo of a writer's physical experience comes into us when we read her poem.
— Jane Hirshfield, Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry
She dotes on poetry, sir. She adores it; I may say that her whole soul and mind are wound up, and entwined with it. She has produced some delightful pieces, herself, sir. You may have met with her 'Ode to an Expiring Frog,' sir.
— Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers
Danse Russe If I when my wife is sleeping and the baby and Kathleen are sleeping and the sun is a flame-white disc in silken mists above shining trees,-- if I in my north room dance naked, grotesquely before my mirror waving my shirt round my head and singing softly to myself: "I am lonely, lonely. I was born to be lonely, I am best so!" If I admire my arms, my face, my shoulders, flanks, buttocks against the yellow drawn shades,-- Who shall say I am not the happy genius of my household?
— William Carlos Williams
We are all old-timers,each of us holds a locked razor.
— Robert Lowell, Life Studies
It’s not the word made flesh we want in writing, in poetry and fiction, but the flesh made word
— William H. Gass
When I throw back my head and howlPeople (women mostly) sayBut you've always done what you want, You always get your way- A perfectly vile and foulInversion of all that's been.What the old ratbags meanIs I've never done what I don't.So the shit in the shuttered chateauWho does his five hundred wordsThen parts out the rest of the dayBetween bathing and booze and birdsIs far off as ever, but soIs that spectacled schoolteaching sod(Six kids, and the wife in pod, And her parents coming to stay)...Life is an immobile, locked, Three-handed struggle betweenYour wants, the world's for you, and (worse)The unbeatable slow machineThat brings what you'll get. Blocked, They strain round a hollow stasisOf havings-to, fear, faces.Days sift down it constantly. Years.--The Life with the Hole in It
— Philip Larkin, Philip Larkin Poetry
Every poem I write falls short in some important way. But I go on trying to write the one that won’t. 
— Dorianne Laux
If what we need to dream, to move our spirits most deeply and directly toward and through promise, is discounted as a luxury, then we give up the core -- the fountain -- of our power, our womanness; we give up the future of our worlds. (From "Poetry is Not a Luxury")
— Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches
To evade such temptations is the first duty of the poet. For as the ear is the antechamber to the soul, poetry can adulterate and destroy more surely then lust or gunpowder. The poet's, then, is the highest office of all. His words reach where others fall short. A silly song of Shakespeare's has done more for the poor and the wicked than all the preachers and philanthropists in the world. 
— Virginia Woolf, Orlando
In their effort to divorce language and experience, deconstructionist critics remind me of middle-class parents who do not allow their children to play in the street.
— Charles Simic, The Unemployed Fortune-Teller: Essays and Memoirs
I have to live with myself and so, I want to be fit for myself to know.
— Edgar A. Guest
Language is fossil Poetry.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
As she laughed I was aware of becoming involved in her laughter and being part of it, until her teeth were only accidental stars with a talent for squad-drill.
— T.S. Eliot
Let be be finale of seem.The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
— Wallace Stevens, Harmonium
When the heart stops oozing blood & the outpouring is clear as water (so to speak) then you know you've turned the corner & will be well.When you look inward & all pathwaysare no longer dark but clearly lighted& shine like transparent drinking strawsthen you know you'll find your way alone.When the gray morning has nothing to do with you & doesn't weigh you downlike a heavy blanket, then you knowthat moving will be easy again and your body will flow through timelike the river it really is, smooth & deep.no rocks, no shallows to smash or catch you,keep you from moving on.When the heart slowsto its normal rhythm and the beautyof birdsong at dawn doesn't make you cry because you are alone listening, then you know that everything has happened that is going to for now, and you can get on withyour life & everything about it that was yours alone and always finer thananyone could ever imagine it would bewithout him. 
— Grace Butcher
I don't like a kind of workshop that is about editing--I don't want to sit there and be an editor. I don't want to tell someone how to "fix" a poem.
— Natasha Trethewey
At any moment, you know, your manufactured cool could blow.
— Nicole Blackman
A word is elegy to what it signifies.
— Robert Haas
Criticism is like politics: if you don't make your own you are by default accepting the status quo and are finally yourself responsible for whatever the status quo does to you.
— Annie Finch, The Body of Poetry: Essays on Women, Form, and the Poetic Self
Cansado,sobre todo,de estar siempre conmigo,de hallarme cada día,cuando termina el sueño,allí, donde me encuentre,con las mismas naricesy con las mismas piernas...
— Oliverio Girondo
May your love for me be likethe scent of the evening seadrifting inthrough a quiet windowso i do not have to runor chase or fall... to feel youall i have to dois breathe.
— Sanober  Khan, A Thousand Flamingos
the onewho will jolt awakeall the unwrittenthe unsungand the unlived in me. i am waitingfor him.
— Sanober  Khan
i hope thatwhoever you arewherever you areand no matter howyou are feelingyou will always have somethingto smile about.
— Sanober  Khan
your smile.is the ultimategolden dream.all the poemsin the worldare waking up from.
— Sanober  Khan
be the kiss in my hairthat no one seesmove, when i movesigh, when i sigh...be that line from a poemthat i hold in my eyes.
— Sanober  Khan
and the afterglow...of your gaze...is the onlysweater that I need.
— Sanober  Khan, Turquoise Silence
I will learn your anger. I will lick your sadness.I will feast on your hunger.
— Caitlyn Siehl, What We Buried
My house burned downBut anyway, it was afterThe flower petals had already fallen
— Tachibana Higuchi
I never paid any attention to people who told me to go out and live. I belonged always to whatever was far from me and to whatever I could never be. Anything that was not mine, however base, always seemed to me to be full of poetry. The only thing I ever loved was pure nothingness.
— Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet
Since when," he asked,"Are the first line and last line of any poemWhere the poem begins and ends?
— Seamus Heaney
She tells me about dreams. She says my dreams are helium and balloons, and I've made the mistake of letting go a few to many times, but I still got this one. Tied around my finger like a wedding ring because even though I don't believe in marriages, I'm gonna bring this one home.
— Shane L. Koyczan, Silence Is A Song I Know All The Words To
How does a poet know when a poem is ended? Because it lies flat, taut; nothing can be added or subtracted. How does a woman know when a marriage is over? Because of the way her life suddenly shears off in just two directions: past and future.
— Carol Shields, The Stone Diaries
To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoopin the oats, to air in the lunglet evening come.Let it come, as it will, and don'tbe afraid. God does not leave uscomfortless, so let evening come.
— Jane Kenyon, Collected Poems
I was not sorrowful, but only tiredOf everything that ever I desired.
— Ernest Dowson, The Poems and Prose of Ernest Dowson
I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind,Flung roses, roses riotously with the throng,Dancing, to put thy pale, lost lilies out of mind;But I was desolate and sick of an old passion,Yea, all the time, because the dance was long;I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.I cried for madder music and for stronger wine,But when the feast is finished and the lamps expire,Then falls thy shadow, Cynara! the night is thine;And I am desolate and sick of an old passion,Yea, hungry for the lips of my desire:I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.
— Ernest Dowson, The Poems and Prose of Ernest Dowson
Later that night she picked the polish offwith her front teeth until the bed you sharedfor seven years seemed speckled with glitterand blood.
— Warsan Shire, Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth
Even ivory towers need central heating.
— Breyten Breytenbach
Once a poet calls his myth a myth, he prevents the reader from treating it as a reality; we use the word 'myth' only for stories we ourselves cannot believe.
— Adam Kirsch
From her thighs, she gives you lifeAnd how you treat she who gives you lifeShows how much you value the life given to you by the Creator.And from seed to dustThere is ONE soul above all others --That you must always show patience, respect, and trustAnd this woman is your mother.And when your soul departs your bodyAnd your deeds are weighed against the featherThere is only one soul who can save yoursAnd this woman is your mother.And when the heart of the universeAsks her hair and mind,Whether you were gentle and kind to herHer heart will be forced to remain silentAnd her hair will speak freely as a separate entity,Very much like the seaweed in the sea --It will reveal all that it has heard and seen.This woman whose heart has seen yours,First before anybody else in the world,And whose womb had opened the doorFor your eyes to experience light and more --Is your very own MOTHER.So, no matter whether your mother has been cruel,Manipulative, abusive, mentally sick, or simply childishHow you treat her is the ultimate test.If she misguides you, forgive her and show her the right wayWith simple wisdom, gentleness, and kindness.And always remember,That the queen in the Creator's kingdom,Who sits on the throne of all existence,Is exactly the same as in yours.And her name is,THE DIVINE MOTHER.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
Life is just a slide. Back and forth between loving and leaving, remembering and forgetting, holding on and letting go.
— Nicole  Lyons
Don't be afraid of poetry.
— Clifton Fadiman, Clifton Fadiman's Fireside Reader
Be true to your word and your work and your friend.
— John Boyle O'Reilly
I many times thought peace had come,	When peace was far away;	As wrecked men deem they sight the land	At centre of the sea,	And struggle slacker, but to prove,	 As hopelessly as I,	How many the fictitious shores	Before the harbor lie.
— Emily Dickinson, Selected Poems
Ignorance and virtue suck on the same straw...
— Gabriel Thy
This is definitely / for the brothers / who ain't here.
— Willie Perdomo, Where a Nickel Costs a Dime
Even the most political poem is an act of faith.
— Martín Espada
I sometimes think you despise poetry,' said Phineas. 'When it is false I do. The difficulty is to know when it is false and when it is true.
— Anthony Trollope, Phineas Finn
Though I play at the edges of knowing, truly I know our part is not knowing, but looking, and touching, and loving
— Mary Oliver, Why I Wake Early
Gather ye rose-buds while ye may,Old Time is still a-flying;And this same flower that smiles today,	Tomorrow will be dying.
— Robert  Herrick
Door of passage to the other side, the soul frees itself in stride.
— Jim Morrison, The Lords and the New Creatures
Depression/The assassin inside me
— HastyWords, Darker Side of Night
To be loved is all I need, And whom I love, I love indeed.
— Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Complete Poems
When we walk in the sunour shadows are like barges of silence.
— Mark Strand
Only our love hath no decay; This no tomorrow hath, nor yesterday, Running it never runs from us away, But truly keeps his first, last, everlasting day.
— John Donne, The Complete English Poems
Thus, though we cannot make our sunStand still, yet we will make him run.
— Andrew Marvell, To His Coy Mistress
Crowded places, I shunned them as noises too rudeAnd fled to the silence of sweet solitude.
— John Clare, Poems Chiefly from Manuscript
I have daughters and I have sons.When one of them lays a handOn my shoulder, shining fishTurn suddenly in the deep sea.
— Robert Bly
Have you suffered, starved and triumphed, grovelled down, yet grasped at glory,Grown bigger in the bigness of the whole? 'Done things' just for the doing, letting babblers tell the story,Seeing through the nice veneer the naked soul? Have you seen God in His splendours, heard the text that nature renders?(You'll never hear it in the family pew.) The simple things, the true things, the silent men who do things–Then listen to the wild–it's calling you.
— Robert W. Service, The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses
Many women are singing together of this: one is in a shoe factory cursing the machine, one is at the aquarium tending a seal, one is dull at the wheel of her Ford, one is at the toll gate collecting,one is tying the cord of a calf in Arizona, one is straddling a cello in Russia,one is shifting pots on the stove in Egypt,one is painting her bedroom walls moon color, one is dying but remembering a breakfast, one is stretching on her mat in Thailand, one is wiping the ass of her child,one is staring out the window of a train in the middle of Wyoming and one is anywhere and some are everywhere and all seem to be singing, although some can not sing a note.
— Anne Sexton, The Complete Poems
Had we but world enough, and time...
— Andrew Marvell, To His Coy Mistress
Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime, And, departing, leave behind us Footprints on the sand of time; Footprints, that perhaps another, Sailing o'er life's solenm main, A forlorn and shipwrecked brother, Seeing, shall take heart again. Let us then be up and doing, With a heart for any fate; Still achieving, still pursuing, Learn to labor and to wait.
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Voices of the Night
For my part, I love to give myself up to the illusion of poetry. A hero of fiction that never existed is just as valuable to me as a hero of history that existed a thousand years ago.
— Washington Irving, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Stories
My true-love hath my heart and I have his, By just exchange one for the other given: I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss; There never was a bargain better driven.
— Philip Sidney, The Poems of Sir Philip Sidney
Just as in the second part of a verse bad poets seek a thought to fit their rhyme, so in the second half of their lives people tend to become more anxious about finding actions, positions, relationships that fit those of their earlier lives, so that everything harmonizes quite well on the surface: but their lives are no longer ruled by a strong thought, and instead, in its place, comes the intention of finding a rhyme.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human
Born into thisInto hospitals which are so expensive that it's cheaper to dieInto lawyers who charge so much it's cheaper to plead guiltyInto a country where the jails are full and the madhouses closedInto a place where the masses elevate fools into rich heroes...
— Charles Bukowski
Poetry is nobody’s business except the poet’s, and everybody else can fuck off.
— Philip Larkin
Those moments before a poem comes, when the heightened awareness comes over you, and you realize a poem is buried there somewhere, you prepare yourself. I run around, you know, kind of skipping around the house, marvelous elation. It’s as though I could fly.
— Anne Sexton
Little WordsWhen you are gone, there is nor bloom nor leaf,Nor singing sea at night, nor silver birds;And I can only stare, and shape my griefIn little words.I cannot conjure loveliness, to drownThe bitter woe that racks my cords apart.The weary pen that sets my sorrow downFeeds at my heart.There is no mercy in the shifting year,No beauty wraps me tenderly about.I turn to little words- so you, my dear,Can spell them out.
— Dorothy Parker, The Portable Dorothy Parker
Imagine what you are writing about. See it and live it. Do not think it up laboriously, as if you were working out mental arithmetic. Just look at it, touch it, smell it, listen to it, turn yourself into it. When you do this, the words look after themselves, like magic.
— Ted Hughes, Poetry in the Making: An Anthology
Read for yourselves, read for the sake of your inspiration, for the sweet turmoil in your lovely head. But also read against yourselves, read for questioning and impotence, for despair and erudition, read the dry sardonic remarks of cynical philosophers like Cioran or even Carl Schmitt, read newspapers, read those who despise, dismiss or simply ignore poetry and try to understand why they do it. Read your enemies, read those who reinforce your sense of what's evolving in poetry, and also read those whose darkness or malice or madness or greatness you can't understand because only in this way will you grow, outlive yourself, and become what you are.
— Adam Zagajewski, A Defense of Ardor: Essays
I am a student of life, and don't want to miss any experience. There's poetry in this sort of thing, you know--or perhaps you don't know, but it's all the same.
— H.P. Lovecraft, Old Bugs
I wasn’t reading poetry because my aim was to work my way through English Literature in Prose A–Z.But this was different.I started to cry.(…)The unfamiliar and beautiful play made things bearable that day, and the things it made bearable were another failed family—the first one was not my fault, but all adopted children blame themselves. The second failure was definitely my fault.I was confused about sex and sexuality, and upset about the straightforward practical problems of where to live, what to eat, and how to do my A levels.I had no one to help me, but the T.S. Eliot helped me.So when people say that poetry is a luxury, or an option, or for the educated middle classes, or that it shouldn’t be read at school because it is irrelevant, or any of the strange and stupid things that are said about poetry and its place in our lives, I suspect that the people doing the saying have had things pretty easy. A tough life needs a tough language—and that is what poetry is. That is what literature offers—a language powerful enough to say how it is.It isn’t a hiding place. It is a finding place.
— Jeanette Winterson, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
Compañera usted sabe que puede contar conmigo no hasta dos o hasta diez sino contar conmigosi alguna vez advierte que la miro a los ojos y una veta de amor reconoce en los míos no alerte sus fusiles ni piense qué delirio a pesar de la veta o tal vez porque existe usted puede contar conmigosi otras veces me encuentra huraño sin motivo no piense qué flojera igual puede contar conmigopero hagamos un trato yo quisiera contar con usted es tan lindo saber que usted existe uno se siente vivo y cuando digo esto quiero decir contar aunque sea hasta dos aunque sea hasta cinco no ya para que acuda presurosa en mi auxilio sino para saber a ciencia cierta que usted sabe que puede contar conmigo
— Mario Benedetti Hagamos un trato
I see what I want of Love... I see horses making the meadow dance, fifty guitars sighing, and a swarm of bees suckling the wild berries, and I close my eyes until I see our shadow behind this dispossessed place... I see what I want of people: their desire to long for anything, their lateness in getting to work and their hurry to return to their folk... and their need to say: Good Morning...
— Mahmoud Darwish, If I Were Another: Poems
Brimming. That's what it is, I want to get to a place where my sentences enact brimming.
— Li-Young Lee, Breaking the Alabaster Jar: Conversations with Li-Young Lee
No matter the disappointment, you simply cannot divorce your favorite team.
— Kevin  Walker, These Moments Pass: Poems
Haleine contre haleine, échauffe-moi la vie,Mille et mille baisers donne-moi je te prie,Amour veut tout sans nombre, amour n’a point de loiTranslated: Breath against breath warms my life.A thousand kisses give me I pray thee.Love says it all without number,love knows no law.
— Pierre de Ronsard
Blackadder was fifty-four and had come to editing Ash out of pique. He was the son and grandson of Scottish schoolmasters. His grandfather recited poetry on firelight evenings: Marmion, Childe Harold, Ragnarok. His father sent him to Downing College in Cambridge to study under F. R. Leavis. Leavis did to Blackadder what he did to serious students; he showed him the terrible, the magnificent importance and urgency of English literature and simultaneously deprived him of any confidence in his own capacity to contribute to, or change it. The young Blackadder wrote poems, imagined Dr Leavis’s comments on them, and burned them.
— A.S. Byatt, Possession
In fiction, the characters have their own lives. They may start as a gloss on the author’s life, but they move on from there. In poetry, especially confessional poetry but in other poetry as well, the poet is not writing characters so much as emotional truth wrapped in metaphor. Bam! Pow! A shot to the gut.
— Jane Yolen
Hate flows from a broken spirit.
— Kevin  Walker, These Moments Pass: Poems
I have been used to consider poetry as the food of love
— Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
Foggy nights bring some comfort.He can get lost in the mistand there is no one to stare or question.
— Susie Clevenger, Dirt Road Dreams
Moonlight and high wind.Dark poplars toss, insinuate the sea.
— Li-Young Lee, The City in Which I Love You
I'll be writing as long as I can hold a pen in my curled, crimped arthritic hands and then I'll dictate it, if it comes to that. They'll have to pry my pen out of my cold, dead fingers - and even then, I'll fight 'em for it. Guaranteed.
— Wanda Lea Brayton
Emotion is the poetry of life.
— Marty Rubin
J'ai cueilli ce brin de bruyèreL'automne est morte souviens-t'enNous ne nous verrons plus sur terreOdeur du temps brin de bruyèreEt souviens-toi que je t'attends
— Guillaume Apollinaire, Alcools
Poetry is nothing if it exists only in books. One has to find it in one's own life.
— Marty Rubin
The crazy thing about poetry is how its simplicity makes it complicated.
— Richelle E. Goodrich, Slaying Dragons
a happy birthdaythis evening, I sat by an open windowand read till the light was gone and the bookwas no more than a part of the darkness.I could easily have switched on a lamp,but I wanted to ride the day down into night,to sit alone, and smooth the unreadable pagewith the pale gray ghost of my hand
— Ted Kooser
Here dwell together still two men of noteWho never lived and so can never die:How very near they seem, yet how remoteThat age before the world went all awry.But still the game’s afoot for those with earsAttuned to catch the distant view-halloo:England is England yet, for all our fears–Only those things the heart believes are true.A yellow fog swirls past the window-paneAs night descends upon this fabled street:A lonely hansom splashes through the rain,The ghostly gas lamps fail at twenty feet.Here, though the world explode, these two survive,And it is always eighteen ninety-five.
— Vincent Starrett
Those hours given over to basking in the glow of an imaginedfuture, of being carried away in streams of promise by a love ora passion so strong that one felt altered forever and convincedthat even the smallest particle of the surrounding world wascharged with purpose of impossible grandeur; ah, yes, andone would look up into the trees and be thrilled by the wind-loosened river of pale, gold foliage cascading down and by thehigh, melodious singing of countless birds; those moments, somany and so long ago, still come back, but briefly, like firefliesin the perfumed heat of summer night.
— Mark Strand, Almost Invisible: Poems
This poem has been called obscure. I refuse to believe that it is obscurer than pity, violence, or suffering. But being a poem, not a lifetime, it is more compressed.
— Dylan Thomas
anyone who has no feelings for animals has a dead heart.
— Raegan Butcher, Rusty String Quartet
You cannot devote your life to an abstraction. Indeed, life shatters all abstractions in one way or another, including words such as "faith" or "belief". If God is not in the very fabric of existence for you, if you do not find Him (or miss Him!) in the details of your daily life, then religion is just one more way to commit spiritual suicide.
— Christian Wiman, Ambition and Survival: Becoming a Poet
We didn’t deny the obvious,but we didn’t entirely accept it either.I mean, we said hello to it each morningin the foyer. We patted its little headas it made a mess in the backyard,but we never nurtured it. Many nights the obvious showed upat our bedroom door, in its pajamas,unable to sleep, in need of a hug,and we just stared at it like an Armenian,or even worse— hid beneath the coversand pretended not to hear its tiny sobs.
— Jeffrey McDaniel
Prowling the meanings of a word, prowling the history of a person, no use expecting a flood of light. Human words have no main switch. But all those little kidnaps in the dark. And then the luminous, big, shivering, discandied, unrepentant, barking web of them that hangs in your mind when you turn back to the page you were trying to translate...
— Anne Carson, Nox
On No Work of WordsOn no work of words now for three lean months in the bloodyBelly of the rich year and the big purse of my bodyI bitterly take to task my poverty and craft:To take to give is all, return what is hungrily givenPuffing the pounds of manna up through the dew to heaven,The lovely gift of the gab bangs back on a blind shaft.To lift to leave from the treasures of man is pleasing deathThat will rake at last all currencies of the marked breathAnd count the taken, forsaken mysteries in a bad dark.To surrender now is to pay the expensive ogre twice.Ancient woods of my blood, dash down to the nut of the seasIf I take to burn or return this world which is each man's work.
— Dylan Thomas, Collected Poems
I have seen it over and over, the same sea, the same,slightly, indifferently swinging above the stones,icily free above the stones,above the stones and then the world.If you should dip your hand in,your wrist would ache immediately,your bones would begin to ache and your hand would burnas if the water were a transmutation of firethat feeds on stones and burns with a dark gray flame.If you tasted it, it would first taste bitter,then briny, then surely burn your tongue.It is like what we imagine knowledge to be:dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free,drawn form the cold hard mouthof the world, derived from the rocky breastsforever, flowing and drawn, and sinceour knowledge is historical, flowing, and flown.
— Elizabeth Bishop, North and South
I surrendered my identity in your eyes.Now I'm just like everybody else, and it's so funny, the way monogamy is funny, the waysomeone falling down in the street is funny.I entered a revolving door and emergedas a human being. When you think of meis my face electronically blurred? I remember your collarbone, forming the tiniestsatellite dish in the universe, your smileas the place where parallel lines inevitably crossed.Now dinosaurs freeze to death on your shoulder.I remember your eyes: fifty attack dogs on a single leash, how I once held the soft audience of your hand.I've been ignored by prettier women than you, but none who carried the heavy pitchers of silenceso far, without spilling a drop.
— Jeffrey McDaniel
you’re already naked in this worldin this timein this lifebeacause your next loveyour next hungeryou next laughterand even your next tearmay never come
— Baharak Sedigh
The mimicry of passion is the most intolerable of all poses.
— Oscar Wilde, Reviews
Remember BarbaraIt rained all day on Brest that dayAnd you walked smilingFlushed enraptured streaming-wetIn the rainRemember BarbaraIt rained all day on Brest that dayAnd I ran into you in Siam StreetYou were smilingAnd I smiled tooRemember BarbaraYou whom I didn't knowYou who didn't know meRememberRemember that day stillDon't forgetA man was taking cover on a porchAnd he cried your nameBarbaraAnd you ran to him in the rainStreaming-wet enraptured flushedAnd you threw yourself in his armsRemember that BarbaraAnd don't be mad if I speak familiarlyI speak familiarly to everyone I loveEven if I've seen them only onceI speak familiarly to all who are in loveEven if I don't know themRemember BarbaraDon't forgetThat good and happy rainOn your happy faceOn that happy townThat rain upon the seaUpon the arsenalUpon the Ushant boatOh BarbaraWhat shitstupidity the warNow what's become of youUnder this iron rainOf fire and steel and bloodAnd he who held you in his armsAmorouslyIs he dead and gone or still so much aliveOh BarbaraIt's rained all day on Brest todayAs it was raining beforeBut it isn't the same anymoreAnd everything is wreckedIt's a rain of mourning terrible and desolateNor is it still a stormOf iron and steel and bloodBut simply cloudsThat die like dogsDogs that disappearIn the downpour drowning BrestAnd float away to rotA long way offA long long way from BrestOf which there's nothing left.
— Jacques Prévert
no poet can know what his poem is going to be like until he has written it.
— W.H. Auden, The Dyer's Hand
He'd been let down so oftenHis brow was on the floorBut then they foundA small hole in the groundAnd let him down some more
— David Thewlis
I will go to campus alone dressed in antique silk slips and beat-up cowboy boots and gypsy beads, and I will study poetry. I will sit on the edge of the fountain in the plaza and write.
— Francesca Lia Block, Girl Goddess #9: Nine Stories
A poem is a meteor.
— Wallace Stevens
IMPROVIDENCEThe other lives I might have ledAll now might as well beDead. Survived by no one.Barren, without issue of any sort:This withered bud, failedIn art and love. With no time leftTo change my course. But time enoughfor infinite remorse.
— John Tottenham, The Inertia Variations
Poets, like fighters, both reap the benefits of roadwork.
— Cameron Conaway, Caged: Memoirs of a Cage-Fighting Poet
When words lose their meaning, physical force takes over.
— W.H. Auden
…be awake to the Life that is loving you andsing your prayer, laugh your prayer, dance your prayer, runand weep and sweat your prayer,sleep your prayer, eat your prayer, paint, sculpt, hammer, and read your prayer, sweep, dig, rake, drive and hoe your prayer,garden and farm and build and clean your prayer,wash, iron, vacuum, sew, embroider and pickle your prayer,compute, touch, bend and fold but never deleteor mutilate your prayer.Learn and play your prayer, work and rest your prayer,fast and feast your prayer, argue, talk, whisper, listen and shout your prayer,groan and moan and spit and sneeze your prayer,swim and hunt and cook your prayer,digest and become your prayer,release and recover your prayer,breathe your prayer, be your prayer
— Alla Renée Bozarth
We must experience certain things in life, even in our childhood, so we can later look back and value the journey.
— Tanya R. Liverman, Journey to Legacy: A Poetic Timeline of My Life
The element of craftsmanship in poetry is obscured by the fact that all men are taught to speak and most to read and write, while very few men are taught to draw or paint or write music.
— W.H. Auden
Мы не умеем прощаться,-Всё бродим плечо к плечу.Уже начинает смеркаться,Ты задумчив, а я молчу.В церковь войдем, увидимОтпеванье, крестины, брак,Не взглянув друг на друга, выйдем...Отчего всё у нас не так?Или сядем на снег примятыйНа кладбище, легко вздохнем,И ты палкой чертишь палаты,Где мы будем всегда вдвоем.
— Анна Ахматова, Избранное
Everyone should be forcibly transplanted to another continent from their family at the age of three.
— Philip Larkin, Philip Larkin: Letters to Monica
Dear, I can't write, it's all a fantasy: a kind of circling obsession.
— Philip Larkin, Philip Larkin: Letters to Monica
From love's plectrum arisesthe song of the string of lifeLove is the light of lifelove is the fire of life
— Muhammad Iqbal
]Sardisoften turning her thoughts here]you like a goddessand in your song most of all she rejoiced.But now she is conspicuous among Lydian womenas sometimes at sunsetthe rosyfingered moonsurpasses all the stars. And her lightstretches over salt seaequally and flowerdeep fields.And the beautiful dew is poured outand roses bloom and frailchervil and flowering sweetclover.But she goes back and forth rememberinggentle Atthis and in longingshe bites her tender mind
— Sappho, If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho
I never heard sound and thrill of my painful heart until that very day she touched it.
— Santosh Kalwar
]sing to usthe one with violets in her lap]mostly]goes astray
— Sappho, If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho
Let them shoot us in the head,My blood will grow rootsand will blossom.
— Visar Zhiti, The Condemned Apple: Selected Poetry
And I choose to be aloneRather than wrapped in arms I could never need.
— Merrit Malloy
There is bad in all good authors: what a pity the converse isn't true!
— Philip Larkin, Philip Larkin: Letters to Monica
Come boy, and pour for me a cupOf old Falernian. Fill it upWith wine, strong, sparkling, bright, and clear;Our host decrees no water here.Let dullards drink the Nymph's pale brew,The sluggish thin their blood with dew.For such pale stuff we have no use;For us the purple grape's rich juice.Begone, ye chilling water sprite;Here burning Bacchus rules tonight!
— Catullus, Selections From Catullus: Translated into English verse with an Introduction on the theory of Translation
I believe in being a poet in all moments of life. Being a poet means being human. I know some poets whose daily behavior has nothing to do with their poetry. In other words, they are only poets when they write poetry. Then it is finished and they turn into greedy, indulgent, oppressive, shortsighted, miserable, and envious people. Well, I cannot believe their poems
— فروغ فرخزاد
Within my reflection I see tears, for what I see is the truth, are my greatest fears.
— Atarah L. Poling, Hidden Light
Les enfants qui s'aiment s'embrassent deboutContre les portes de la nuitEt les passants qui passent les désignent du doigtMais les enfants qui s'aimentNe sont là pour personneEt c'est seulement leur ombreQui tremble dans la nuitExcitant la rage des passantsLeur rage, leur mépris, leurs rires et leur envieLes enfants qui s'aiment ne sont là pour personneIls sont ailleurs bien plus loin que la nuitBien plus haut que le jourDans l'éblouissante clarté de leur premier amour
— Jacques Prévert, Paroles
Only times and places, only names and ghosts.
— Aldous Huxley
I see a bird carrying me and carrying you, with us as its wings, beyond the dream, to a journey that has no end and no beginning, no purpose and no goal. I do not speak to you, and you do not speak to me; we listen only to the music of silence. Silence is the friend's trust of friend, imagination's self-confidence between rain and rainbow. A rainbow is inspiration provoking the poet, uninvited, the infatuation of the poet with the prose of the Quran. Which of your Lord's blessings do you disown? We are absent, you and I; we are present, you and I. And absent. Which of your Lord's blessings do you disown?
— Mahmoud Darwish, Absent Presence