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Exlpore more Poetry quotes

"Death, like a host, comes smiling to the door;Smiling, he greets us, on that tranquil shoreWhere neither piping bird nor peeping dawnDisturbs the eternal sleep,But in the stillness far withdrawnOur dreamless rest for evermore we keep."

"Poetry. i am not writing it.(make way for me please)it is my skin. dripping with light."

"Poetry involves the mysteries of the irrational perceived through rational words."

"I can write no stately proemAs a prelude to my lay;From a poet to a poemI would dare to say.For if of these fallen petalsOne to you seem fair,Love will waft it till it settlesOn your hair.And when wind and winter hardenAll the loveless land,It will whisper of the garden,You will understand."

"The secret of poetry is never explained - is always new. We have not got farther than mere wonder at the delicacy of the touch, & the eternity it inherits. In every house a child that in mere play utters oracles, & knows not that they are such. 'Tis as easy as breath. 'Tis like this gravity, which holds the Universe together, & none knows what it is."

"I once began to ask around what constitutes a good poem. It felt petty, in a sense. A boy would need no help in deciding which girls he thinks are pretty."

"Rejoice with glitters of ashes tonightSparkling for moon's spiced silver biteUpon skin of darkness, loving night moreStorm begins unlocking cold wind's door."

"A chronic poet should always be an inveterate nature-lover."
Explore more quotes by Diane Wakoski

"But I am not political in the current events sense, and I have never wanted anyone to read my poetry that way."

"I do not read newspapers. I do not watch television. I am not interested in current events, although I will occasionally discuss them if other people want to discuss them."

"I think that's what poetry does. It allows people to come together and identify with a common thing that is outside of themselves, but which they identify with from the interior."

"PC stuff just lowers the general acceptance of good work and replaces it with bogus poetry that celebrates values that in themselves are probably quite worthy."

"I think one of the things that language poets are very involved with is getting away from conventional ideas of beauty, because those ideas contain a certain attitude toward women, certain attitudes toward sex, certain attitudes toward race, etc."

"One, I have a wonderful publisher, Black Sparrow Press; as long as they exist, they will keep me in print. And they claim they sell very respectable numbers of my books, so I guess, and it's true, every place I go, my books are in libraries and on bookshelves."

"From reading a previous answer, you know that I consider all those aspects to be part of American cultural myth and thus they figure into good American poetry, whether the poet is aware of what he is doing or not."

"I definitely wish to distinguish American poetry from British or other English language poetry."

"American poetry, like American painting, is always personal with an emphasis on the individuality of the poet."

"I think that great poetry is the most interesting and complex use of the poet's language at that point in history, and so it's even more exciting when you read a poet like Yeats, almost 100 years old now, and you think that perhaps no one can really top that."
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