Poetry Quotes - Page 16

• Poetry is not only dream and vision; it is the skeleton architecture of our lives. It lays the foundations for a future of change, a bridge across our fears of what has never been before.

  Audre Lorde

  Life, Dream, Skeletons

  Audre Lorde (2012). “Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches”, p.38, Crossing Press

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• War: a massacre of people who don't know each other for the profit of people who know each other but don't massacre each other.

  Paul Valery

  War, People, Killing Each Other

  Bizarre, issues 24-31, (p. 102), 1962.

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• Be curious, not judgmental.

  Walt Whitman

  Life, Meaningful, Judging

  Walt Whitman, The Secret Libraries (2016). “Walt Whitman Quotes... Vol. 20: Motivational and Inspirational Life Quotes by Walt Whitman”

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• With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

  Max Ehrmann

  Inspirational, Life, Happiness

  Max Ehrmann (2003). “Desiderata: A Survival Guide for Life”, p.10, Andrews McMeel Publishing

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• We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams.

  Arthur O'Shaughnessy

  Inspirational, Music, Dream

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• Poetry is the language of intensity. Because we are going to die, an expression of intensity is justified.

  C.D. Wright

  Death, Expression, Dying

  C.D. Wright (2012). “Cooling Time: An American Poetry Vigil”, p.61, Copper Canyon Press

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• I've had the wind knocked out of me, but never the hurricane

  Jeffrey McDaniel

  Anger, Wind, Self Control

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• We were together. I forget the rest.

  Walt Whitman

  Love, Funny, Romantic

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• ..we wear the mask that grins and lies, it hides our cheeks and shades our eyes- this debt we pay to human guile; with torn and bleeding hearts we smile.

  Paul Laurence Dunbar

  Smile, Lying, Eye

  1895 'We Wear the Mask', stanza 1.

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• He who has rejected his demons badgers us to death with his angels

  Henri Michaux

  Angel, Annoying People, Demon

  Henri Michaux (1994). “Darkness Moves: An Henri Michaux Anthology, 1927-1984”, p.176, Univ of California Press

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• It is a great feeling to know that from a window I can go to books to cans of beer to past loves. And from these gather enough dream to sneak out a back door.

  Gregory Corso

  Dream, Book, Beer

  Gregory Corso (1976). “Gasoline & Vestal Lady on Brattle: Pocket Poets Number 8”, p.105, City Lights Books

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• 

  Don’t you love the Oxford Dictionary? When I first read it, I thought it was a really really long poem about everything.

  David Bowie

  Book, Reading, Oxford

  "FMO’s Final Interview With David Bowie". Interview with Johnnny, fmobserver.com. March 4, 2016.

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• I see little hope for democracy as an effective form of government, but I admire the poetry of how it makes its victims complicit in their own destruction.

  Eliezer Yudkowsky

  Sarcastic, Hope, Sarcasm

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• Poetry is like a bird, it ignores all frontiers.

  Yevgeny Yevtushenko

  Bird, New Frontiers, Poetry Is

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• Poetry is important. No less than science, it seeks a hold upon reality, and the closeness of its approach is the test of its success.

  Babette Deutsch

  Reality, Important, Tests

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• A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.

  W. H. Auden

  Love, Passion, Language Words

  "Poets at Work" by W. H. Auden, (p. 170), 1948.

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• A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.

  Robert Frost

  Love, Life, Writing

  Robert Frost, Lawrance Roger Thompson (1964). “Selected letters”

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• Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It's that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that's what the poet does.

  Allen Ginsberg

  Time, Lying, Party

  Quoted in Barry Miles Ginsberg (1989), ch.5.

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• the truth of a poem is its form and its content, its music and its meaning are the same.

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Form

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• Wine is bottled poetry.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  Love, Drinking, Food

  Robert Louis Stevenson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated)”, p.4365, Delphi Classics

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• A poet must never make a statement simply because it is sounds poetically exciting; he must also believe it to be true.

  W. H. Auden

  Believe, Writing, Sound

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• Poetry's a mere drug, Sir.

  George Farquhar

  Drug, Mere

  'Love and a Bottle' (1698) act 3, sc. 2.

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• Science is for those who learn; poetry, for those who know.

  Philibert Joseph Roux

  Knowledge, Science, Accounts

  Meditations of a Parish Priest Ch. 1, No. LXXI (transl. Isabel Hapgood)

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• Poetry is everywhere; it just needs editing.

  James Tate

  Editing, Reading Poetry, Needs

  James Tate (1999). “The route as briefed”, Univ of Michigan Pr

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• Only the poet has any right to be sorry for the poor, if he has anything to spare when he has thought of the dull, commonplace rich.

  William Bolitho

  Sorry, Dull, Rich

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