#poetry

Life goes on in the same manner, evil wins and peace is slaughtered. Change the channel, change the view, tired of the same reruns on the evening news. ↗

— Susie Clevenger

#modern-society #news #poetry #change

They flee from me that sometime did me seek With naked foot, stalking in my chamber. I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek, That now are wild and do not remember That sometime they put themself in danger To take bread at my hand; and now they range, Busily seeking with a continual change. ↗

— Thomas Wyatt

#poetry #change

When I am dead, my dearest, Sing no sad songs for me; Plant thou no roses at my head, Nor shady cypress tree: Be the green grass above me With showers and dewdrops wet: And if thou wilt, remember, And if thou wilt, forget. I shall not see the shadows, I shall not feel the rain; I shall not hear the nightingale Sing on as if in pain: And dreaming through the twilight That doth not rise nor set, Haply I may remember, And haply I may forget. ↗

— Christina Rossetti

#poetry #death

You should always be trying to write a poem you are unable to write, a poem you lack the technique, the language, the courage to achieve. Otherwise you're merely imitating yourself, going nowhere, because that's always easiest. ↗

— John Berryman

#writing #courage

Every one who has a heart, however ignorant of architecture he may be, feels the transcendent beauty and poetry of the mediaeval churches. ↗

— Goldwin Smith

#beauty #churches #every #feels #heart

And it was at that age … poetry arrived in search of me. I don’t know, I don’t know where it came from, from winter or a river. I don’t know how or when, no they were not voices, they were not words, nor silence, but from a street I was summoned, from the branches of night, abruptly from the others, among violent fires or returning alone. There I was without a face, and it touched me. I did not know what to say, my mouth had no way with names, my eyes were blind, and something started in my soul, fever or forgotten wings, and I made my own way, deciphering that fire, and I wrote the first faint line, faint, without substance, pure nonsense, pure wisdom of someone who knows nothing, and suddenly I saw the heavens unfastened and open, planets, palpitating plantations, shadow perforated, riddled with arrows, fire and flowers, the winding night, the universe. And I, infinitesimal being, drunk with the great starry void, likeness, image of mystery, felt myself a pure part of the abyss, I wheeled with the stars, my heart broke loose on the wind. ↗

— Pablo Neruda

#age

Desire, loneliness, wind in the flowering almond— surely these are the great, the inexhaustible subjects to which my predecessors apprenticed themselves. I hear them echo in my own heart, disguised as convention. ↗

— Louise Glück

#age

Everyone should be forcibly transplanted to another continent from their family at the age of three. ↗

— Philip Larkin

#letters-to-monica #philip-larkin #poem #poet #poetry

The first time I saw hundreds of fiddlehead ferns boiling in an enormous pot I realized what an odd person I must be to hear tiny cries from the mouths of cooking vegetables. ↗

— Maureen Seaton

#vegetables #age

I once saw a small child go to an electric light switch as say, "Mamma, can I open the light?" She was using the age-old language of exploration, the language of art. It was a sort of metaphor, but she was not using it as ornamentation. ↗

— Ezra Pound

#language #poetry #age