#poetry

I played God today And it was fun! I made animals that men had never seen So they would stop and scratch their heads Instead of scowling. I made words that men had never heard So they would stop and stare at me Instead of running. And I made love that laughed So men would giggle like children Instead of sighing. Tomorrow, perhaps, I won't be God And you will know it Because you won't see any three-headed cats Or bushes with bells on... I wish I could always play God So that lonely men could laugh! ↗

— James Kavanaugh

#love

I think we are in rats’ alley Where the dead men lost their bones. ↗

— T.S. Eliot

#men

...you can be talented as a wolf is breathtakingly fierce...silver and gray, like smoke in the trees - but what do you do with terrible beauty?... ↗

— John Geddes

#love #nature #poetry-quotes #beauty

Real haiku is the soul of poetry. Anything that is not actually present in one's heart is not haiku. The moon glows, flowers bloom, insects cry, water flows. There is no place we cannot find flowers or think of the moon. This is the essence of haiku. Go beyond the restrictions of your era, forget about purpose or meaning, separate yourself from historical limitations—there you will find the essence of true art, religion, and science. ↗

— Santoka Taneda

#creating #haiku #japanese #poetry #zen

L'aube exalteé ainsi qu'un peuple de colombes, et j'ai vu quelquefois ce que l'homme a cru voir! (And dawn, exalted like a host of doves - and then I've seen what men believe they've seen!) ↗

— Arthur Rimbaud

#men

As Auden is believed to have said, no poem saved a single Jew from the gas chambers. Never mind. Write the poems anyway. Play the music in spite of that. ↗

— Philip Pullman

#art

If my like for you was a football crowd, you’d be deaf ’cause of the roar. And if my like for you was a boxer, there’d be a dead guy lying on the floor. And if my like for you was sugar, you’d lose your teeth before you were twenty. And if my like for you was money, let’s just say you’d be spending plenty. ↗

— Cath Crowley

#poetry #sweet-talk #love

There’s no money in poetry, but there’s no poetry in money, either ↗

— Robert Graves

#poets #money

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society, where none intrudes, By the deep sea, and music in its roar: I love not man the less, but Nature more ↗

— George Gordon Byron

#poetry #solitude #love

It is always fatal to have music or poetry interrupted. ↗

— George Eliot

#poetry #music