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Exlpore more Poetry quotes
"That men, who might have tower'd in the vanOf all the congregated world, to fanAnd winnow from the coming step of timeAll chaff of custom, wipe away all slimeLeft by men-slugs and human serpentry,Have been content to let occasion die,Whilst they did sleep in love's Elysium."
"My love is a winter's mistgently dissolvingthrough the windowat the nape of your neck."
"Poems can getsleepless tooand becomethe loneliest thingin the universe."
"Whatever you get out of poetry - take it. take it. take it. Words are better off felt than understood."
"I do think that poetry is important though, if you don't strive at it, if you don't fill it full of stars and falseness."
"A poem in the heart is worthmore than a million dollarsin the bank account."
"But here there is no light, Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy waysI cannot see what flowers are at my feet, Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs, But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet..Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine, The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves."
"May this poetrybe the homeyou will someday come back to."
"The American bards shall be marked for generosity and affection and for encouraging competitors. The great poets are also to be known by the absence in them of tricks and by the justification of perfect personal candor. How beautiful is candor! All faults may be forgiven of him who has perfect candor."
Explore more quotes by Thom Gunn
"When I was an undergraduate I had very badly annotated editions of Shakespeare's sonnets, all of which left out the important fact that will has a sexual sense in Shakespeare's sonnets."
"When I first started teaching at Berkeley in 1958, I could not announce that I was gay to anybody, though probably quite a few of my fellow teachers knew."
"As humans we look at things and think about what we've looked at. We treasure it in a kind of private art gallery."
"I was at a benefit for some imprisoned students in the '60s at San Francisco State, and there were lots of poets reading for the benefit: one was Elizabeth Bishop."
"When I first started to write, I was aware of being queer, but I didn't write about it. Queer poems would probably not have been accepted by the editors I sent them to."
"I was reading the poems of Rochester. Rochester made himself out to be bisexual, but I think that was only to shock. Most of his poetry is sexual, even pornographic."
"I had assumed that I would age with all my friends growing old around me, dying off very gradually one by one. And here was a plague that cut them off so early."
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