The greatest cunning is to have none at all.
Poetry is a search for syllables to shoot at the barriers of the unknown and the unknowable.
Poetry is a puppet-show, where riders of skyrockets and divers of sea fathoms gossip about the sixth sense and the fourth dimension.
Always the path of American destiny has been into the unknown. Always there arose enough reserves of strength, balances of sanity, portions of wisdom to carry the nation through to a fresh start with ever-renewing vitality.
In the average newspaper there is not a complete suppression of stories that the sacred cows don't want printed. But rather what happens is that the stories get printed with stresses, colorations and emphasis that favor the sacred cows.
By night the skyscraper looms in the smoke and the stars and has a soul.
The machine yes the machine never wastes anybody's time never watches the foreman never talks back.
To work hard, to live hard, to die hard, and then go to hell after all would be too damned hard.
Poetry is a fossil rock-print of a fin and a wing, with an illegible oath between.
Faith is indispensable, and the world at times does not seem to have quite enough of it. It can and has accomplished what seems to be the impossible. Wars have been started and men and nations lost for the lack of it. Faith starts from the individual and builds men and nations. America was built by and on the faith of our ancestors.
I wrote poems in my corner of the Brooks Street station. I sent them to two editors who rejected them right off. I read those letters of rejection years later and I agreed with those editors.
There will be a rusty gun on the wall, sweetheart, The rifle grooves curling with flakes of rust. A spider will make a silver string nest in the darkest, warmest corner of it.
Poetry is the report of a nuance between two moments, when people say, 'Listen!' and 'Did you see it?' 'Did you hear it? What was it?'
I knew I would read all kinds of books and try to get at what it is that makes good writers good. But I made no promises that I would write books a lot of people would like to read.
Shame is the feeling you have when you agree with the woman who loves you that you are the man she thinks you are.
Poetry is the establishment of a metaphorical link between white butterfly-wings and the scraps of torn-up love-letters.
To those who had ordered them to death, one of them said: “We die because the people are asleep and you will die because the people will awaken.”
I have often wondered what it is an old building can do to you when you happen to know a little about things that went on long ago in that building.
Lips half-willing in a doorway. Lips half-singing at a window. Eyes half-dreaming in the walls. Feet half-dancing in a kitchen. Even the clocks half-yawn the hours And the farmers make half-answers.
When one has the right swing and enthusiasm, selling is not unlike hunting, a veritable sport. To scare up the game by preliminary talk and to know how long to follow it, to lose your gain through poorly directed argument, to hang on to game that finally eludes, to boldly confront, to quickly circle around, to keep on the trail, tireless and keen, till you have bagged some orders, there is some satisfaction in returning at night, tired of the trail, but proud of the days work done.
Poetry is an art practiced with the terribly plastic material of human language.
Poetry is a type-font design for an alphabet of fun, hate, love, death.
Poetry is a section of river-fog and moving boat-lights, delivered between bridges and whistles, so one says, 'Oh!' and another, 'How?'
I decided I would go to Chicago and try my luck as a writer after those eight months as a fireman.
Hog butcher for the world, Tool maker, stacker of wheat, Player with railroads and the nation's freight handler; Stormy, husky, brawling, City of big shoulders.
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