#poe

With heart at rest I climbed the citadel's Steep height, and saw the city as from a tower, Hospital, brothel, prison, and such hells, Where evil comes up softly like a flower. Thou knowest, O Satan, patron of my pain, Not for vain tears I went up at that hour; But like an old sad faithful lecher, fain To drink delight of that enormous trull Whose hellish beauty makes me young again. Whether thou sleep, with heavy vapors full, Sodden with day, or, new appareled, stand In gold-laced veils of evening beautiful, I love thee, infamous city! Harlots and Hunted have pleasures of their own to give, The vulgar herd can never understand. ↗

— Charles Baudelaire

#poetry #beauty

If everybody became a poet the world would be much better. We would all read to each other. ↗

— Nikki Giovanni

#better #each #everybody #much #other

The form of my poem rises out of a past that so overwhelms the present with its worth and vision that I'm at a loss to explain my delusion that there exist any real links between that past and a future worthy of it. ↗

— Hart Crane

#between #delusion #exist #explain #form

Again like Williams, with the emphasis now regrettable, when a man makes a poem, makes it mind you, he takes the words as he finds them lying interrelated about him. ↗

— Robert Creeley

#again #emphasis #finds #him #interrelated

That poetry survived in its formal agencies finally, and that prose survived to get something said. ↗

— Robert Creeley

#finally #formal #get #poetry #prose

Favorite poems are like favorite children. We definitely have them but we never tell as the others would have their feelings hurt. ↗

— Nikki Giovanni

#definitely #favorite #feelings #hurt #like

A prose writer gets tired of writing prose, and wants to be a poet. So he begins every line with a capital letter, and keeps on writing prose. ↗

— Samuel McChord Crothers

#capital #every #gets #keeps #letter

The poet Melvin B. Tolson once said, 'A civilization is judged only in its decline.' That made sense to me. I would imagine the same is true for poets and tennis players. ↗

— Nikki Giovanni

#decline #i #imagine #judged #made

The flower is the poetry of reproduction. It is an example of the eternal seductiveness of life. ↗

— Jean Giraudoux

#eternal #example #flower #life #poetry

As soon as war is declared it will be impossible to hold the poets back. Rhyme is still the most effective drum. ↗

— Jean Giraudoux

#declared #drum #effective #hold #impossible