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Read through the most famous quotes by topic #poetry
The first fact of the world is that it repeats itself. I had been taught to believe that the freshness of children lay in their capacity for wonder at the vividness and strangeness of the particular, but what is fresh in them is that they still experience the power of repetition, from which our first sense of the power of mastery comes. Though predictable is an ugly little world in daily life, in our first experience of it we are clued to the hope of a shapeliness in things. To see that power working on adults, you have to catch them out: the look of foolish happiness on the faces of people who have just sat down to dinner is their knowledge that dinner will be served. Probably, that is the psychological basis for the power and the necessity of artistic form...Maybe our first experience of form is the experience of our own formation...And I am not thinking mainly of poems about form; I’m thinking of the form of a poem, the shape of its understanding. The presence of that shaping constitutes the presence of poetry. ↗
Perhaps there is an idea among Japanese students that one general difference between Japanese and Western poetry is that the former cultivates short forms and the latter longer ones, gut this is only in part true. ↗
Cook was a captain of the powder-days When captains, you might have said, if you had been Fixed by their glittering stare, half-down the side, Or gaping at them up companionways, Were more like warlocks than a humble man— And men were humble then who gazed at them, Poor horn-eyed sailors, bullied by devils' fists Of wind or water, or the want of both, Childlike and trusting, filled with eager trust— Cook was a captain of the sailing days When sea-captains were kings like this, Those captains drove their ships By their own blood, no laws of schoolbook steam, Till yards were sprung, and masts went overboard— Daemons in periwigs, doling magic out, Who read fair alphabets in stars Where humbler men found but a mess of sparks, Who steered their crews by mysteries And strange, half-dreadful sortilege with books, Used medicines that only gods could know The sense of, but sailors drank In simple faith. That was the captain Cook was when he came to the Coral Sea And chose a passage into the dark. Men who ride broomsticks with a mesmerist Mock the typhoon. So, too, it was with Cook. ↗
Sittin’ in a café in dark glasses sippin’ coffee dunkin’ doughnuts while it’s sunny thinking guns guns guns and I’ve got pockets full of bullets and a suitcase full of money and a fuckin’ awful headache and a police rifle that fires dummies and I’m listening to Barney because she really wants to tell me all the fifty million reasons why she’s feelin’ fuckin’ funny and she wants to kill her mummy and she wants me to kill her daddy but there really is no logic to the way we’re spending Sunday because we don’t know where we’re going and we’ve been drinking since last Monday and Booga’s sharpening sticks and he’s looking like a monkey and I’m waiting for my tank and I know it will look chumly because Dobson is my man and he’s part of my fuckin’ family and when I see him next I’m gonna buy him half a shandy. ↗
They’re close. Voices loud and fierce, Slapping faces with words. A scream … A cry … They’re getting closer. Did I lock the door? It’s too late to check. They’re coming. I barely move, barely breathe. Perhaps they’ll go away. But they’re getting closer. The door slams against the wall. My eyes squeeze shut. This curtain is not a shield. They’re here. They’ve come for me. I freeze. Metal rings clank together. My barrier is cast aside. Wearily, I look. Reddened eyes glower at one another … But not at me. I wonder. A moment of silence … Water streams down my face. Steam rolls around my flesh. I glare at the intruders And slide the curtain between us. I wait. He shrieks, “She took my glow stick!” She howls, “No, I didn’t!” I scowl. “Go tell your father about it.” They leave. I inhale the lavender mist. Slather bubbles over my skin. Five more minutes … And, next time, I shall lock the door. ↗
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