#poetry

Poetry and music are very good friends. Like mommies and daddies and strawberries and cream - they go together. ↗

— Nikki Giovanni

#friends #go #good #good friends #like

With heart at rest I climbed the citadel's Steep height, and saw the city as from a tower, Hospital, brothel, prison, and such hells, Where evil comes up softly like a flower. Thou knowest, O Satan, patron of my pain, Not for vain tears I went up at that hour; But like an old sad faithful lecher, fain To drink delight of that enormous trull Whose hellish beauty makes me young again. Whether thou sleep, with heavy vapors full, Sodden with day, or, new appareled, stand In gold-laced veils of evening beautiful, I love thee, infamous city! Harlots and Hunted have pleasures of their own to give, The vulgar herd can never understand. ↗

— Charles Baudelaire

#poetry #beauty

It is not growing like a tree In bulk, doth make Man better be; Or standing long an oak, three hundred year, To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere: A lily of a day Is fairer far in May Although it fall and die that night; It was the plant and flower of Light. In small proportions we just beauties see; And in short measures life may perfect be (Ben Jonson) ↗

— Aidan Chambers

#beauty

We don't attempt to have any theme for a number of the anthology, or to have any particular sequence. We just put in things that we like, and then we try to alternate the prose and the poetry. ↗

— James Laughlin

#anthology #any #attempt #just #like

Concrete poets continue to turn out beautiful things, but to me they're more visual than oral, and they almost really belong on the wall rather than in a book. I haven't the least idea of where poetry is going. ↗

— James Laughlin

#beautiful #beautiful things #belong #book #concrete

I think that concrete poetry seems to have, as far as I can see, come to a kind of a dead end. It doesn't seem to be going any further than it went in its high period of about five or six years ago. ↗

— James Laughlin

#ago #any #as far as #come #concrete

I think that is where poetry reading becomes such an individual thing. I mean I have friend who like poets who just don't say anything to me at all, I mean they seem to me rather ordinary and pedestrian. ↗

— James Laughlin

#becomes #friend #i #i think #individual

I think there's no excuse for the American poetry reader not knowing a good deal about what is going on in the rest of the world. ↗

— James Laughlin

#american #deal #excuse #going #good

I think we will always have the impulse towards visual poetry with us, and I wouldn't agree with Bly that it's a bad thing. It depends on the ability of the individual poet to do it well, and to make a shape which is interesting enough to hold your attention. ↗

— James Laughlin

#agree #always #attention #bad #bad thing

I want to branch out. I want to write. I write poetry. I want to see my children grow up well. ↗

— Annie Lennox

#children #grow #grow up #i #i write