#poetry

Poetry is of so subtle a spirit, that in the pouring out of one language into another it will evaporate. ↗

— John Denham

#evaporate #into #language #out #poetry

To know anything of a poet but his poetry is, so far as the poetry is concerned, to know something that may be entertaining, even delightful, but is certainly inessential. ↗

— John Drinkwater

#certainly #concerned #delightful #entertaining #even

I've often entertained paranoid suspicions about my fridge and what it's been doing to my poetry when I'm not looking, but I never even considered that my fan was thinking about me. ↗

— George Murray

#been #considered #doing #entertained #even

Each memorable verse of a true poet has two or three times the written content. ↗

— Alfred de Musset

#content #each #memorable #poet #three

Song of Myself I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the beginning and the end, But I do not talk of the beginning or the end. There was never any more inception than there is now, Nor any more youth or age than there is now, And will never be any more perfection than there is now, Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now. ↗

— Walt Whitman

#poetry #age

Our age has built itself vast reservoirs of power / formless as the straining energy that it wrests from the earth. ↗

— Rainer Maria Rilke

#age

You have shown me a love that cannot be given or taken let us back in the fullness of ourselves a simple kiss now blood and breath both awakened a balanced diet to sustain life and health. ↗

— Saul Williams Said the Shotgun to the head

#diet

Though much is taken, much abides; and though We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. ↗

— Alfred Tennyson

#heroism #poetry #ulysses #age

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

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