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.

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.

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

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

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.

The pen is the tongue of the mind.

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

At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.

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

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.

You cannot always
make a living
writing poetry

but maybe,
if you’re lucky,

you can make
a life of it.