#poetry

I'm not really quiet or shy. Ask any of my friends! But I always ground my poetry in life itself. Poetry is an art of language, though, so I am always aware of every word's meaning, or multiple meanings. ↗

— Anne Stevenson

#am #any #art #ask #aware

Poetry is as precise a thing as geometry. ↗

— Gustave Flaubert

#poetry #precise #thing

On No Work of Words On no work of words now for three lean months in the bloody Belly of the rich year and the big purse of my body I bitterly take to task my poverty and craft: To take to give is all, return what is hungrily given Puffing 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 death That will rake at last all currencies of the marked breath And 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 seas If I take to burn or return this world which is each man's work. ↗

— Dylan Thomas

#poetry #reciprocity #writer-s-block #death

The sort of poetry I seek resides in objects man can't touch. ↗

— E. M. Forster

#man #objects #poetry #resides #seek

That's a wonderful change that's taken place, and so most poetry today is published, if not directly by the person, certainly by the enterprise of the poet himself, working with his friends. ↗

— A. R. Ammons

#change #directly #enterprise #friends #himself

That is what I did with Jack, and that's why he liked to do the readings with me because he knew I was there for him, and for our ability to blend the poetry and the music. ↗

— David Amram

#because #blend #did #him #i

We forget old stories, but those stories remain the same. ↗

— Dejan Stojanovic

#forget #forgetting #literature #literature-quotes #old-stories

Great poetry is always written by somebody straining to go beyond what he can do. ↗

— Stephen Spender

#beyond #go #great #poetry #somebody

No poem is easily grasped; so why should any reader expect fast results? ↗

— John Barton

#any #easily #expect #fast #grasped

As she bends for a Kleenex in the dark, I am thinking of other girls: the girl I loved who fell in love with a lion--she lost her head over it--we just necked a lot; of the girl who fell in love with the tightrope, got addicted to getting high wired and nothing else was enough; all the beautiful, damaged women who have come through my life and I wonder what would have happened if I'd met them sooner, what they were like before they were so badly wounded. All this time I thought I'd been kissing, but maybe I'm always doing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, kissing dead girls in hopes that the heart will start again. Where there's breath, I've heard, there's hope. ↗

— Daphne Gottlieb

#poetry #women #beauty