Inspirations

I am the poet of the poor, because I was poor when I loved;

since I could not give gifts, I gave words.

The difference between the poet and the mathematician is that the poet tries to get his head into the heavens while the mathematician tries to get the heavens into his head.

Truly fine poetry must be read aloud. A good poem does not allow itself to be read in a low voice or silently. If we can read it silently, it is not a valid poem: a poem demands pronunciation. Poetry always remembers that it was an oral art before it was a written art. It remembers that it was first song.

Poets are damned… but see with the eyes of angels.

I had no one to help me, but the T. S. Eliot helped me.

So when people say that poetry is a luxury, or an option, or for the educated middle classes, or that it shouldn’t be read at school because it is irrelevant, or any of the strange stupid things that are said about poetry and its place in our lives, I suspect that the people doing the saying have had things pretty easy. A tough life needs a tough language – and that is what poetry is. That is what literature offers – a language powerful enough to say how it is.

It isn’t a hiding place. It is a finding place.

Poems are a hotline to our hearts, and we forget this emotional power at our peril.

To write poetry and to commit suicide, apparently so contradictory, had really been the same, attempts at escape.

Poetry is written with tears, fiction with blood, and history with invisible ink.

Listen, real poetry doesn’t say anything; it just ticks off the possibilities. Opens all doors. You can walk through anyone that suits you.

Every poem should remind the reader that they are going to die.

Perfect purity is possible if you turn your life into a line of poetry written with a splash of blood.

“I have been used to consider poetry as “the food of love” said Darcy. “Of a fine, stout, healthy love it may. Everything nourishes what is strong already. But if it be only a slight, thin sort of inclination, I am convinced that one good sonnet will starve it entirely away.”

Some girls are full of heartache and poetry and those are the kind of girls who try to save wolves instead of running away from them.

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.

Poetry is a life-cherishing force. For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.

Whereas story is processed in the mind in a straightforward manner, poetry bypasses rational thought and goes straight to the limbic system and lights it up like a brushfire. It’s the crack cocaine of the literary world.

When she does not find love, she may find poetry.

To elevate the soul, poetry is necessary.

The only artists I have ever known who are personally delightful are bad artists. Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are. A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating. The worse their rhymes are, the more picturesque they look. The mere fact of having published a book of second-rate sonnets makes a man quite irresistible. He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realize.

What can be explained is not poetry.

Poetry is the fiery index to the genius of the age.

The death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world.

I turned silences and nights into words. What was unutterable, I wrote down. I made the whirling world stand still.

To be creative means to be in love with life. You can be creative only if you love life enough that you want to enhance its beauty, you want to bring a little more music to it, a little more poetry to it, a little more dance to it.

As far as I am concerned, poetry is a statement concerning the human condition, composed in verse.

Poetry has been the longest pleasure of my life.

Nothing ever ends poetically. It ends and we turn it into poetry.

Always learn poems by heart. They have to become the marrow in your bones. Like fluoride in the water, they’ll make your soul impervious to the world’s soft decay.

For the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth – that Love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love.

We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.

The poetry of the earth is never dead.

We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. So medicine, law, business, engineering… these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love… these are what we stay alive for.

Some moments are nice, some are nicer, some are even worth writing about.

Love, the poet said, is woman’s whole existence.

Fiction, poetry, music, really deep serious sex, and, in various ways, religion — these are the places (for me) where loneliness is countenanced, stared down, transfigured, treated.

Don’t use the phone. People are never ready to answer it. Use poetry.

Poetry is a way of looking at the world for the first time.

Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.

In love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man’s body.

Solitude gives birth to the original in us, to beauty unfamiliar and perilous – to poetry. But also, it gives birth to the opposite: to the perverse, the illicit, the absurd.

All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry.

If I had my life to live over again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week.

But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.

Among other things, you’ll find that you’re not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You’re by no means alone on that score, you’ll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You’ll learn from them—if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It’s a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn’t education. It’s history. It’s poetry.

A poet is someone who can pour light into a cup, then raise it to nourish your beautiful parched, holy mouth.

Before you die, experience the love of a writer, poet or painter. If you’re lucky enough to be an artist muse, they will immortalise you.

You deserve a lover who takes away the lies and bring you hope, coffee, and poetry.

What is poetry other than silent screams finding their refuge on paper?

A woman whose mood improves with a book, a poem, a song or a cup of coffee is not defeated by anyone; even life loses with her.

Poetry and Hums aren’t things you get, they’re things which get you. And all you can do is go where they can find you.

Poetry, she thought, wasn’t written to be analyzed; it was meant to inspire without reason, to touch without understanding.

A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape of the universe, helps to extend everyone’s knowledge of himself and the world around him.

Poetry is the shadow cast by our streetlight imaginations.

If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?

Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write.

This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple “I must,” then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your whole life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse. Then come close to Nature. Then, as if no one had ever tried before, try to say what you see and feel and love and lose…

…Describe your sorrows and desires, the thoughts that pass through your mind and your belief in some kind of beauty – describe all these with heartfelt, silent, humble sincerity and, when you express yourself, use the Things around you, the images from your dreams, and the objects that you remember. If your everyday life seems poor, don’t blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is not poverty and no poor, indifferent place. And even if you found yourself in some prison, whose walls let in none of the world’s sounds – wouldn’t you still have your childhood, that jewel beyond all price, that treasure house of memories? Turn your attentions to it. Try to raise up the sunken feelings of this enormous past; your personality will grow stronger, your solitude will expand and become a place where you can live in the twilight, where the noise of other people passes by, far in the distance. – And if out of this turning-within, out of this immersion in your own world, poems come, then you will not think of asking anyone whether they are good or not. Nor will you try to interest magazines in these works: for you will see them as your dear natural possession, a piece of your life, a voice from it. A work of art is good if it has arisen out of necessity. That is the only way one can judge it.

Once, poets were magicians. Poets were strong, stronger than warriors or kings — stronger than old hapless gods. And they will be strong once again.

There is not a particle of life which does not bear poetry within it.

You might as well ask an artist to explain his art, or ask a poet to explain his poem. It defeats the purpose. The meaning is only clear thorough the search.

Poetry is what happens when nothing else can.

Trees are poems the earth writes upon the sky,
we fell them down and turn them into paper,
that we may record our emptiness.

Only the very weak-minded refuse to be influenced by literature and poetry.

On the one hand poetry is useless. It can’t change the world materially. On the other hand it is a basic part of human existence. It came into the world when humans did. It’s what makes human beings human

Poetry helps me understand who I am. It helps me understand the world around me. But above all, what poetry has taught me is the fact that I need to embrace mystery in order to be completely human.

Poetry is perhaps what teaches us to nurture the charming illusion: how to be reborn out of ourselves over and over again, and use words to construct a better world, a fictitious world that enables us to sign a pact for a permanent and comprehensive peace . . . with life

As I write, I create myself again and again.

The poem is a little myth of man’s capacity of making life meaningful. And in the end, the poem is not a thing we see – it is, rather, a light by which we may see – and what we see is life.

God is the perfect poet.

Poetry is an orphan of silence. The words never quite equal the experience behind them.

Poetry: the best words in the best order.

We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.

Poetry should surprise by a fine excess and not by singularity—it should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.

Poetry is the journal of the sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air. Poetry is a search for syllables to shoot at the barriers of the unknown and the unknowable. Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away.

He who draws noble delights from sentiments of poetry is a true poet, though he has never written a line in all his life.

It takes a lot of desperation, dissatisfaction, and disillusion to write a few good poems.

Oh, speak no ill of poetry, for ’tis a holy thing.

To be a poet is a condition, not a profession.

I do not go in search of poetry. I wait for poetry to visit me.

Reality only reveals itself when it is illuminated by a ray of poetry.

One should always be drunk. That’s all that matters. … But with what? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you choose. But get drunk.

All great poetry is dipped in the dyes of the heart.

Poetry is thoughts that breathe, and words that burn.

Poetry is plucking at the heartstrings and making music with them.

The poet is the priest of the invisible.

The world is full of poetry. The air is living with its spirit; and the waves dance to the music of its melodies and sparkle in its brightness.

Poetry is a political act because it involves telling the truth.

Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.

Poetry is like a bird, it ignores all frontiers.

Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.

Poetry is eternal graffiti written in the heart of everyone.

Poetry is the exquisite expression of exquisite impressions.

Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.

Poetry … is the revelation of a feeling that the poet believes to be interior and personal which the reader recognizes as his own.

Poetry is emotion put into measure. The emotion must come by nature, but the measure can be acquired by art.

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.

Poetry might be defined as the clear expression of mixed feelings.

Poetry comes from the highest happiness or the deepest sorrow.

Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: It takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity.

Poetry is what in a poem makes you laugh, cry, prickle, be silent, makes your toenails twinkle, makes you want to do this or that or nothing, makes you know that you are alone in the unknown world, that your bliss and suffering is forever shared and forever all your own.

Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.

Poetry is emotion, passion, love, grief—everything that is human. It is not for zombies by zombies.

Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.

Poetry is what gets lost in translation.

Poetry can be dangerous, especially beautiful poetry, because it gives the illusion of having had the experience without actually going through it.

Poetry is ordinary language raised to the Nth power. Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words.

The crown of literature is poetry.

Poetry is the one place where people can speak their original human mind. It is the outlet for people to say in public what is known in private.

It is a test [that] genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.

Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting that speaks.

Always be a poet, even in prose.

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

Poetry is the lifeblood of rebellion, revolution, and the raising of consciousness.

Poetry is one of the ancient arts, and it begins as did all the fine arts, within the original wilderness of the earth.

Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.

You can find poetry in your everyday life, your memory, in what people say on the bus, in the news, or just what’s in your heart.

Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.

Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.

That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you are not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong.

I write only because
There is a voice within me
That will not be still

With me poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion.

You cannot always
make a living
writing poetry

but maybe,
if you’re lucky,

you can make
a life of it.

Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words.

Fire reads poems.
Fire assigns punctuation.
Fast fire with charred eyes
flips pages with flaming fingers.

Who will read verses,
etched in embers.
Burned out words. Decomposed syllables.
Distorted letters.

An impaled head
writes verses under closed eyelids.
Sings us a black poem
inaudibly from the slit throat.

Fair-haired poems burn with fire in their hair.
Nightingales burn above the nightingale city
with singed wings, with the burned out
warble in their beaks.
Roses burn in the walled gardens.
Brothels burn, the minaret rods break.
Churches burn.
In the fire a charred question,
what is a poem.

The faces of clocks burn,
set ablaze all at once.
The time past, the future time
dart from the flames of the present time.

On the question what is death,
blood drips
from the fatal wound of the just born.

Throughout all times poets have been charged
with trying to fix in special words
fateful human events worthy of remembrance,
like solemn chroniclers,
so that young and old could learn them
by heart and sing them in sorrow
to the glory and betterment of all generations. And
yet, poets have always exulted
and mixed their sacred duty to history
with an unbounded lust for the play of the elements.
They’ve written their poems, just as rain and snow
fulfill their duty in nature,
and like the careful sower sows the
upturned earth in fall and reaps in summer.
At this moment I feel a special generosity.
It is fed by all that was
and still remains in human worship,
surpassing my recall and mingling with everything
alive in man’s community and the imagination.
Now I sense as never before that
a poem is the combined force of all human
talents, and that its exemplariness
derives from the abundance of language.

The poem,
the song,
the picture,
is only water drawn
from the well of the people,
and should be given
back to them
in a cup of beauty
so that they may drink
and in drinking,
understand themselves.

I have nature and art and poetry, and if that is not enough, what is enough?

Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.

Want to be immortal?
Break a poet’s heart.

Poetry doesn’t belong to those who write it, but those who need it.

Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.

If a poem hasn’t ripped apart your soul, you haven’t experienced poetry.

Some cry with tears,
others bleed through poetry.

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

The pen is the tongue of the mind.

At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.

Poetry is a lot like love;
it’s not always rational,
that is not its intention.
If you want rational,
read a scientific journal
or a chemistry book.

Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.