#poetry

From key signature to coda, from downbeat to the sound of life's final fermata, our pasts set the tone for all that was, that is, and that ever would be. ↗

— Jamie A. Hughes

#music #past #poetry #life

We live in our own world, A world that is too small For you to stoop and enter Even on hands and knees, The adult subterfuge. And though you probe and pry With analytic eye, And eavesdrop all our talk With an amused look, You cannot find the centre Where we dance, where we play, Where life is still asleep Under the closed flower, Under the smooth shell Of eggs in the cupped nest That mock the faded blue Of your remoter heaven. ↗

— R.S. Thomas

#play #poetry #life

Come qualcuno ha detto giustamente: "non è vero che la forma sia il contenuto", ma la forma è l'urgenza che viene prima del contenuto. ↗

— Carmelo Bene

#poetry #life

April is the cruelest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain. Winter kept us warm, covering Earth in forgetful snow, feeding A little life with dried tubers. Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade, And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten, And drank coffee, and talked for an hour. Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch. And when we were children, staying at the arch-duke's, My cousin's, he took me out on a sled, And I was frightened. He said, Marie, Marie, hold on tight. And down we went. In the mountains, there you feel free. I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter. ↗

— T.S. Eliot

#life

Most people become bankrupt through having invested too heavily in the prose of life. To have ruined one's self over poetry is an honour. ↗

— Oscar Wilde

#poetry #prose #life

Meridian First daylight on the bittersweet-hung sleeping porch at high summer; dew all over the lawn, sowing diamond- point-highlighted shadows; the hired man's shadow revolving along the walk, a flash of milkpails passing; no threat in sight, no hint anywhere in the universe, of that apathy at the meridian, the noon of absolute boredom; flies crooning black lullabies in the kitchen, milk-soured crocks, cream separator still unwashed; what is there to life but chores and more chores, dishwater, fatigue, unwanted children; nothing to stir the longueur of afternoon except possibly thunderheads; climbing, livid, turreted alabaster lit up from within by splendor and terror -- forded lightening's split-second disaster. ↗

— Amy Clampitt

#life

Sometimes it’s great, and sometimes it’s shit. These are the things all the great philosophers just won’t tell you flat out about life. You keep moving, keep living, keep breathing And you keep writing-creating because that’s what you do And that’s who you are. There are no magical voices to guide You except your own. Make it count. ~ R.M. ENGELHARDT ↗

— R.M. Engelhardt

#poet #poetry #quotes-on-life #quotes-on-writing #r-m-engelhardt

Unless you are silent, you will not know your urgent heart, how it beats between the thin skin of yes and no. ↗

— Drew Myron

#poetry-love-spirituality #poetry-quotes-life #reflection #thoughtful #life

And would it have been worth it, after all, Would it have been worth while, After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets, After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor - And this, and so much more? - ↗

— T.S. Eliot

#prufrock #love

In Blackwater Woods Look, the trees are turning their own bodies into pillars of light, are giving off the rich fragrance of cinnamon and fulfillment, the long tapers of cattails are bursting and floating away over the blue shoulders of the ponds, and every pond, no matter what its name is, is nameless now. Every year everything I have ever learned in my lifetime leads back to this: the fires and the black river of loss whose other side is salvation, whose meaning none of us will ever know. To live in this world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go. ↗

— Mary Oliver

#poetry #life