poetry

"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead; I lift my eyes and all is born again."

"The inmost spirit of poetry, in other words, is at bottom, in every recorded case, the voice of pain – and the physical body, so to speak, of poetry, is the treatment by which the poet tries to reconcile that pain with the world."

"I Go Down To The ShoreI go down to the shore in the morningand depending on the hour the wavesare rolling in or moving out,and I say, oh, I am miserable,what shall—what should I do? And the sea saysin its lovely voice:Excuse me, I have work to do."

"Times change, as do our wills, What we are - is ever changing; All the world is made of change, And forever attaining new qualities."

"O stand, stand at the window As the tears scald and start;You shall love your crooked neighbour With your crooked heart."

"Had we but world enough and time, This coyness, lady, were no crime. We would sit down, and think which way To walk, and pass our long love’s day."

"There is no poetry where there are no mistakes."

"Gather the stars if you wish it soGather the songs and keep them.Gather the faces of women.Gather for keeping years and years.And then...Loosen your hands, let go and say good-bye.Let the stars and songs go.Let the faces and years go.Loosen your hands and say good-bye."

"I find Bukowski to be so edgy, gritty, and daring that he oozes romance, and if couples read him in bed they would appreciate what they have."

"See with your soul and not your eyesbecause to dance with the beasts youmust penetrate their disguise."

"Sparrows and cats will live in my shoe,Sooner than I will live with you.Fish will come walking out of the sea,Sooner than you will come back to me."

"To be a poet is to have a soul so quick to discern, that no shade of quality escapes it, and so quick to feel, that discernment is but a hand playing with finely-ordered variety on the chords of emotion--a soul in which knowledge passes instantaneously into feeling, and feeling flashes back as a new organ of knowledge."

"My writing has appeared in the New Yorker and The Atlantic Monthly, though whenever the newsstand guy catches me scribbling my poetry in them, he always comes along later and erases it."

"I think there is a song out there to describe just about any situation."

"Love one another, but make not a bond of love:Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls."

"One! two! and through and throughThe vorpal blade went snickersnack!He left it dead, and with its headHe went galumphing back."

"I arise from dreams of thee,And a spirit in my feetHas led me- who knows how?To thy chamber-window, Sweet!"

"I am tired, Beloved, of chafing my heart againstThe want of you;Of squeezing it into little inkdrops,And posting it."

"life's not a paragraphAnd death i think is no parenthesis"

"First, I thought, almost despairing,This must crush my spirit now;Yet I bore it, and am bearing-Only do not ask me how."