Poet Quotes - Page 26

• The definition of good prose is proper words in their proper places; of good verse, the most proper words in their proper places.The propriety is in either case relative. The words in prose ought to express the intended meaning, and no more; if they attract attention to themselves, it is, in general, a fault.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Poetry, Attention, Definitions

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1835). “Specimens of the Table Talk of the Late Samuel Taylor Coleridge: In Two Volumes”, p.214

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• A bard whom there were none to praise,
  And very few to read.

  Hartley Coleridge

  Poetry, Obscurity, Praise

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• The man who invented Eskimo Pie made a million dollars, so one is told, but E.E. Cummings, whose verse has been appearing off andon for three years now, and whose experiments should not be more appalling to those interested in poetry than the experiment of surrounding ice-cream with a layer of chocolate was to those interested in soda fountains, has hardly made a dent in the doughy minds of our so-called poetry lovers.

  John Dos Passos

  Men, Pie, Ice Cream

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• This life is a war we are not yet
  winning for our daughters' children.
  Don't do your enemies' work for them.
  Finish your own.

  Marge Piercy

  Daughter, Perseverance, Children

  Marge Piercy (2013). “Moon Is Always Female”, p.115, Knopf

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• I have no connections here; only gusty collisions,
  rootless seedlings forced into bloom, that collapse.
  ...
  I am the Visiting Poet: a real unicorn,
  a wind-up plush dodo, a wax museum of the Movement.
  People want to push the buttons and see me glow.

  Marge Piercy

  Travel, Real, War

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• As we speak of poetical beauty, so ought we to speak of mathematical beauty and medical beauty. But we do not do so; and that reason is that we know well what is the object of mathematics, and that it consists in proofs, and what is the object of medicine, and that it consists in healing. But we do not know in what grace consists, which is the object of poetry.

  Blaise Pascal

  Beauty, Healing, Medicine

  Blaise Pascal (2010). “Thoughts, Letters & Minor Works”, p.17, Cosimo, Inc.

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• How poetry comes to the poet is a mystery.

  John Lennon

  Poetry, Mystery

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• This is not a time to keep the facts from the people-to keep them complacent. To sound the alarm is not to panic but to seek action from an aroused public. For, as the poet Dante once said: 'The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in a time of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.

  John F. Kennedy

  People, Neutrality, Panic

  Speech, Tulsa, Okla., 16 Sept. 1959 (printed in John F. Kennedy, The Strategy of Peace, ed. Allan Nevins [1960]).

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• Freedom is slavery some poets tell us.
  Enslave yourself to the right leader's truth,
  Christ's or Karl Marx', and it will set you free.

  Robert Frost

  Freedom, Poetry, Leader

  Robert Frost (1971). “The poetry of Robert Frost”

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• Summary riposte
  To the dreary wail
  There's no knowing what
  Love is all about.
  Poets know a lot.

  Robert Frost

  Love, Knowing, Poetry

  Robert Frost (1971). “The poetry of Robert Frost”

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• How wide is all this long pretense!
  There is in love a sweetness ready penned,
  Copy out only that, and save expense.

  George Herbert

  Long, Poetry, Sweetness

  George Herbert (1871). “The English poems of George Herbert, together with his collection of proverbs entitled Jacula prudentum”, p.103

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• As flames do work and wind when they ascend,
  So did I weave myself into the sense.

  George Herbert

  Flames, Wind, Poetry

  George Herbert, Christopher Harvey, George Gilfillan (1857). “The poetical works of George Herbert”, p.103

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• I envy no man's nightingale or spring;
  Nor let them punish me with loss of rhyme,
  Who plainly say, My God, My King.

  George Herbert

  Kings, Spring, Loss

  George Herbert, Christopher Harvey, George Gilfillan (1857). “The poetical works of George Herbert”, p.52

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• The poet is he who fights on the passionate
  Side and whoever loses he wins; when he
  Is defeated it is hard to say who wins.

  Allen Tate

  War, Fighting, Winning

  Allen Tate (2014). “Collected Poems, 1919-1976”, p.70, Macmillan

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• POET
  If not in a place, where are the People weeping?
  LIBERAL
  They creep weeping in the face, not place.
  POET
  Is it something with which we may cope
  The weeping, the creeping, the peepee-ing, the peeping?

  Allen Tate

  People, May, Faces

  Allen Tate (1947). “Poems, 1920-1945: A Selection”

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• Now that I have written many words,
  and let out so many loves, for so many,
  and been altogether what I always was
  a woman of excess, of zeal and greed,
  I find the effort useless.

  Anne Sexton

  Poetry, Effort, Greed

  Anne Sexton, “Cigarettes And Whiskey And Wild, Wild Women”

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• I am not lazy.
  I am on the amphetamine of the soul.
  I am, each day,
  typing out the God
  my typewriter believes in.

  Anne Sexton

  Believe, Typewriters, Poetry

  Anne Sexton, Diane Wood Middlebrook, Diana Hume George (2000). “Selected Poems of Anne Sexton”, p.238, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I tell it stories now and then
  and feed it images like honey.
  I will not speculate today
  with poems that think they're money.

  Anne Sexton

  Thinking, Poetry, Stories

  Anne Sexton (1978). “Words for Dr. Y.: uncollected poems with three stories”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH)

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• I was only sitting here in my white study
  with the awful black words pushing me around.

  Anne Sexton

  White, Poetry, Black

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• With this pen I take in hand my selves
  and with these dead disciples I will grapple.
  Though rain curses the window
  let the poem be made.

  Anne Sexton

  Rain, Self, Hands

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• I said, the poets are there
  I hear them singing and lying
  around their round table
  and around me still.

  Anne Sexton

  Lying, Poetry, Singing

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• Poets are sitting in my kitchen.
  Why do these poets lie?
  Why do children get children and
  Did you hear what it said?

  Anne Sexton

  Children, Lying, Poetry

  Anne Sexton, “Portrait Of An Old Woman On The College Tavern Wall”

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• My business is words. Words are like labels,
  or coins, or better, like swarming bees.

  Anne Sexton

  Poetry, Labels, Coins

  Anne Sexton, Diane Wood Middlebrook, Diana Hume George (2000). “Selected Poems of Anne Sexton”, p.17, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• You must be a poet,
  a lady of evil luck
  desiring to be what you are not,
  longing to be
  what you can only visit.

  Anne Sexton

  Evil, Poetry, Luck

  Anne Sexton (1975). “The Awful Rowing Toward God”, Boston : Houghton Mifflin

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• This is what poems are:
  with mercy
  for the greedy,
  they are the tongue's wrangle,
  the world's pottage, the rat's star.

  Anne Sexton

  Stars, Poetry, World

  Anne Sexton, Diane Wood Middlebrook, Diana Hume George (2000). “Selected Poems of Anne Sexton”, p.58, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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