Poet Quotes - Page 34

• Those blessed structures, plot and rhyme--
  why are they no help to me now
  I want to make
  something imagined, not recalled?

  Robert Lowell

  Blessed, Poetry, Plot

  Robert Lowell (1979). “Robert Lowell: a tribute”

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• I am the scroll of the poet behind which samurai swords are being sharpened.

  Lester Cole

  Deception, Samurai, Behinds

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• I have never felt a placard and a poem are in any way similar.

  Kristin Hunter

  Poetry, Politics, Way

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• It is the black poet who bridges the gap in tradition, who modifies tradition when experience demands it, who translates experience into meaning and meaning into belief.

  Henry Louis Gates

  Bridges, Black, Demand

  Henry Louis Gates (1989). “Figures in Black: Words, Signs, and the "racial" Self”, p.176, Oxford University Press on Demand

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• Know that there is often hidden in us a dormant poet, always young and alive.

  Alfred de Musset

  Alive, Dormant, Young

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• Poetry a riprap on the slick rock of metaphysics

  Gary Snyder

  Rocks, Poetry, Slick

  Gary Snyder (1978). “Myths & Texts”, p.48, New Directions Publishing

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• Let all Black Poets die as trumpets,
  And be buried in the dust of marching feet.

  Etheridge Knight

  Death, Dust, Feet

  Etheridge Knight (1986). “The Essential Etheridge Knight”, p.55, University of Pittsburgh Press

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• Black Poets should live--not leap
  From steel bridges, like the white boys do.

  Etheridge Knight

  Boys, Bridges, White

  Etheridge Knight (1973). “Belly song and other poems”, Broadside Pr

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• When in public poetry should take off its clothes and wave to the nearest person in sight; it should be seen in the company of thieves and lovers rather than that of journalists and publishers.

  Brian Patten

  Sight, Clothes, Poetry

  Brian Patten (2007). “Selected Poems”, ePenguin

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• Rick Black writes with the honed elegance of a poet so in command of lyric sentiment and the efficient evocative use of language that what results is indeed as urgent and vulnerable as true prayer ... There is something profoundly human and completely necessary about Star of David.

  Kwame Dawes

  Stars, Prayer, Writing

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• One time on a dive, I wound up drifting up in darkness surrounded by billions of photoluminescent creatures. It was a religious experience, one only a poet could do justice to.

  Graham Hawkes

  Religious, Justice, Darkness

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• Drew Dellinger is one of the most creative, courageous and prophetic poets of his generation. I love his spirit. Don't miss him!

  Cornel West

  Creative, Missing, Generations

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• Drew Dellinger is a deep and courageous poet. How lucky we are!

  Alice Walker

  Lucky, Courageous

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• Frequently, as so many poets and psalmists and songwriters have said, the invisible shift happens through the broken places.

  Anne Lamott

  Broken, Invisible, Said

  "Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers". Book by Anne Lamott, 2012.

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• When we come down into the distant village, visible from the mountain-top, the nobler inhabitants with whom we peopled it have departed, and left only vermin in its desolate streets. It is the imagination of poets which puts those brave speeches into the mouths of their heroes.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Truth, Hero, Imagination

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.282, Delphi Classics

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• Fishermen, hunters, woodchoppers, and others, spending their lives in the fields and woods, in a peculiar sense a part of Nature themselves, are often in a more favorable mood for observing her, in the intervals of their pursuits, than philosophers or poets even, who approach her with expectation. She is not afraid to exhibit herself to them.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Nature, Philosophical, Expectations

  Henry David Thoreau (2015). “Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience: Top American Literary”, p.131, 谷月社

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• The saying, "The Magyar is much too lazy to be bored," is worth thinking about. Only the most subtle and active animals are capable of boredom.--A theme for a great poet would be God's boredom on the seventh day of creation.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Animal, Thinking, Boredom

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• We are as much informed of a writer's genius by what he selects as by what he originates. We read the quotation with his eyes, andfind a new and fervent sense; as a passage from one of the poets, well recited, borrows new interest from the rendering. As the journals say, "the italics are ours.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Eye, Genius, Rendering

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1870). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.194, Рипол Классик

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• Maurice Kenny stands at the forefront of his generation. Few writers of any ethnicity are destined to be remembered in the mainstream of literary history; I believe that Kenny's contributions as a poet are among those few. He writes from the center, as our Elders would say.

  Wendy Rose

  Believe, Writing, Ethnicity

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• Delicate, gracious, and eloquent, John Brandi's poems reveal that he remains an extraordinary profound poet of prayer and praise. His is the most honorable and heroic of ambitions - to dress our broken world in the clothes of language, trust, and hope.

  David St. John

  Prayer, Ambition, Clothes

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• Korea's first Zen Master-poet wrote simple yet elegant poetry of the world he inhabited, both physically and spiritually, and of daily insights-a pause along the way for a deep clear breath, a moon-viewing moment, a seasonal note or a farewell poem to a departing monk. His poems speak softly and clearly, like hearing a temple bell that was struck a thousand years ago.

  Sam Hamill

  Farewell, Moon, Simple

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• There is nothing “still” in the remarkably visceral poems of Alexander Long's third collection, Still Life, and nothing is at rest in these restless and edgy poems. Conversational and kinetic, these poems chart the traces left by the shifting overlays of the templates of literature, rock-and-roll, and contemporary culture. As each poem in Still Life attempts to fix a focus upon a scene or subject, the protean natures under view draw the poet into the eddies and complexities of reflection. This is a powerful and moving collection of poems.

  David St. John

  Powerful, Moving, Reflection

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• Ko Un is a crucial poet for the twenty-first century, and this is an enormously fresh and vivid translation.

  Robert Hass

  Twenties, Vivid, Firsts

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• All of a sudden I understand why I like Aliki Barnstones poems so much. They remind me of the one she has studied most - shall we call her her master - Emily Dickinson. Not in the forms, not, as such, in the music, and not in the references; but in that weird intimacy, that eerie closeness, that absolute confession of soul.... In Barnstone, too, the two worlds are intensely present, and the voice moves back and forth between them. She has the rare art of distance and closeness. It gives her her fine music, her wisdom, her form. She is a fine poet.

  Gerald Stern

  Art, Distance, Moving

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• Hyesims poems: transformative as walking high granite mountains by moonlight, with fragrant herbs underfoot and a thermos of clear tea in the backpack. Their bedrock is thusness, their images beauty is pellucid and new, their view without limit. The shelf of essential Zen poets for American readers grows larger with this immediately indispensable collection.

  Jane Hirshfield

  Views, Tea, Mountain

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