Poetry Quotes

Butterflies...flowers that fly and all but sing.

We can make a little order where we are, and then the big sweep of history on which we can have no effect doesn't overwhelm us. We do it with colors, with a garden, with the furnishings of a room, or with sounds and words. We make a little form, and we gain composure.

The sun was warm but the wind was chill. You know how it is with an April day. When the sun is out and the wind is still, You're one month on in the middle of May. But if you so much as dare to speak, a cloud come over the sunlit arch, And wind comes off a frozen peak, And you're two months back in the middle of March.

It is absurd to think that the only way to tell if a poem is lasting is to wait and see if it lasts. The right reader of a good poem can tell the moment it strikes him that he has taken an immortal wound-that he will never get over it.

Poetry is the renewal of words, setting them free, and that's what a poet is doing: loosening the words.

They would not find me changed from him they knew - only more sure of all I thought was true.

And of course there must be something wrongIn wanting to silence any song.

I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering.

Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting.

The tree the tempest with a crash of woodThrows down in front of us is not to barOur passage to our journey's end for good,But just to ask us who we think we are.

The mind-is not the heart. I may yet live, as I know others live, To wish in vain to let go with the mind- Of cares, at night, to sleep; but nothing tells me That I need learn to let go with the heart.

Lord, I have loved Your sky,Be it said against or for me,Have loved it clear and high,Or low and stormy.

Tree at my window, window tree, My sash is lowered when night comes on; But let there never be curtain drawn Between you and me.

Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.

It looked as if a night of dark intent was coming, and not only a night, an age. Someone had better be prepared for rage.

Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.

A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.

In spring more mortal singers than belongTo any one place cover us with song.Thrush, bluebird, blackbird, sparrow, and robin throng.

The way a crow Shook down on me. The dust of snow From a hemlock tree Has given my heart A change of mood. And saved some part Of a day I had rued.

Poets are like baseball pitchers. Both have their moments. The intervals are the tough things.