Poetry Month Quotes & Sayings

Throughout history, big changes always start with a girl meeting a boy."
"No they don't," Jane said. "They start with somebody being assassinated. — Natalie Standiford

Poetry, like jazz, is one of those dazzling diamonds of creative industry that help human beings make sense out of the comedies and tragedies that contextualize our lives. — Aberjhani

Ultimately life is disease, death and oblivion. It's still better than high school. — Dan Savage

An actor cannot be a censor. I'm there to interpret. — Malcolm McDowell

Lesson learned: If you're already resorting to writing shitty poetry (not the lovey-dovey kind) to get your guys attention within one month of meeting him, he is not the one. — Kate Madison

When I stand in a library where is all the recorded wit of the world, but none of the recording, a mere accumulated, and not trulycumulative treasure; where immortal works stand side by side with anthologies which did not survive their month, and cobweb and mildew have already spread from these to the binding of those; and happily I am reminded of what poetry is,
I perceive that Shakespeare and Milton did not foresee into what company they were to fall. Alas! that so soon the work of a true poet should be swept into such a dust-hole! — Henry David Thoreau

Everyone young going down the long slide
To happiness, endlessly. — Philip Larkin

Those who would like to become writers attend courses on writing poetry and prose and analyze their own work and that of other writers in development. Teachers teach them that talent is not required and that anyone, who wants to be a writer, can do it if they only master the technique of writing and master the formulas of the genre that they choose. With a little brain storming ideas written on cards, as well as designs and plans on the table, one can even write a novel in a month. There is no secret; the whole secret is in the technique, a little research, and the rest is solved by form, according to a formula, in which it is all nicely wrapped up and packaged.
And so, a bestseller is born. — Dejan Stojanovic

I hope for a light grief in old age.
I was born in Rome and it has returned to me.
My autumn was a kind of she-wolf,
And August - the month of Caesars - smiled at me. — Osip Mandelstam

Hearts rebuilt from hope resurrect dreams killed by hate. — Aberjhani

Green was the silence, wet was the light,
the month of June trembled like a butterfly. — Pablo Neruda

Our heart creates everything from nothing. That is the magical power of love. — Debasish Mridha

Hopefully, you will glimpse something of your own life's journey and with Elemental's Power of Illuminated Love, possibly recognize and celebrate something you had not been able to recognize or celebrate before. — Luther E. Vann

I realized

June had never been
just a month

music...
never just a tremble
on my lips

warmth was never
merely a blanket. — Sanober Khan

The act of writing itself is much like the construction of a mirror made of words. Looking at certain illuminated corners of or cracks within the mirror, the author can see fragments of an objective reality that comprise the physical universe, social communities, political dynamics, and other facets of human existence. Looking in certain other corners of the same mirror, he or she may experience glimpses of a True Self sheltered deftly behind a mask of public proprieties. — Aberjhani

When I was 18, I took a trip to Thailand with a friend. We stayed for a month. Bangkok was very raw for a teenager: there were no cellphones, no Internet, and the only music I had with me was this cassette by Liz Phair. I was writing a lot of poetry, and she embodied a talky style of songwriting that I found very accessible. — Jenny Lewis

All I know is, he's a good kid, and he's done right all his life. And he always treats other people right. — Joseph Jackson

Buddhism is really, one of its main practices is understanding and experiencing compassion, and how that ultimately is a road to happiness. — Goldie Hawn

I haven't stopped thinking about anything you have said." She looked down at the worktop. "You're not perfect, Owen, and I apologize for pointing it out to you on so many occasions. I honestly didn't think you were serious until last night, but you're right, I do want you. I always have." She looked up at me. "So, why would I walk away from you now? — Elizabeth Morgan

If love closes, the self contracts and hardens: the mind having nothing else to occupy its attention and give it that change and renewal it requires, busies itself more and more with self-feeling, which takes on narrow and disgusting forms, like avarice, arrogance and fatuity. — Charles Horton Cooley

Love taught me to die with dignity that I might come forth anew in splendor. Born once of flesh, then again of fire, I was reborn a third time to the sound of my name humming haikus in heaven's mouth. — Aberjhani

The birth of a true poet is neither an insignificant event nor an easy delivery. Complications generally begin long before the fated soul carries its dubious light into whatever womb has been kind enough to volunteer the intricate machinery of its blood and prayers and muscles for a gestation period much longer than nine months or even nine years. — Aberjhani

September has come, it is hers
Whose vitality leaps in the autumn,
Whose nature prefers
Trees without leaves and a fire in the fireplace.
So I give her this month and the next
Though the whole of my year should be hers who has rendered already
So many of its days intolerable or perplexed
But so many more so happy.
Who has left a scent on my life, and left my walls
Dancing over and over with her shadow
Whose hair is twined in all my waterfalls
And all of London littered with remembered kisses. — Louis MacNeice

Poetry and art nourish the soul of the world with the flavor-filled substances of beauty, wisdom and truth. — Aberjhani

What was it that gave Ammu this Unsafe Edge? This air of unpredictability? It was what she had battling inside her. An unmixable mix. The infinite tenderness of motherhood and the reckless rage of a suicide bomber. — Arundhati Roy

I called it a baptism in flaming ink that forced me to shed my shyness about recognizing myself as a poet and to accept the fact that life had never given me any choice in the matter. And then I had to discover exactly what that meant. — Aberjhani

To create art with all the passion in one's soul is to live art with all the beauty in one's heart. — Aberjhani

Absolutely no religious rites of any kind, relating to any religious faith, should be associated with my funeral — Arthur C. Clarke

Job and salary is the greatest slavery you can ever set upon yourself — Sunday Adelaja

At the edge of madness you howl diamonds and pearls. — Aberjhani

I remember the first check I got from The Who's recording [of "Young Man Blues"]. I'd been getting checks for $10 and $15 and so forth, and this one was for a much larger amount than that. I thought it was a mistake. — Mose Allison

The difference between me and Abolqader was that I spoke to my wife with refinement and he spoke to her coarsely and violently, I took a shower once a day and he took one once a month, I didn't even eat spring onions and he ate onions and garlic and radishes by the kilo, I read her poetry by Sa'di and he belched at her...and so in my wife's eyes I was stupid and he was clever, I was an idiot and he was intelligent. I was coarse and he was refined...But apparently he was a very good traveller.." Asadollah Mirza (from My Uncle Napoleon). — Iraj Pezeshkzad

No non-poetic account of reality can be complete. — John Myhill

They blew up your homes and demolished the grocery / stores and blocked the Red Cross and took away doctors / to jail and they cluster-bombed girls and boys / whose bodies / swelled purple and black into twice the original size / and tore the buttocks from a four month old baby / and then / they said this was brilliant — June Jordan

I have written some songs, but I would really call what I've done poetry at the end of the day, because I'll sit with my guitar for hours and hours on end for, like, a week and then I won't touch it for a month. I also just have no confidence. And you know what? I don't have time, because I'd rather be doing other things, like knitting. — Amanda Seyfried

Nobody makes movies bad on purpose. — Roland Emmerich

The state - or, to make matters more concrete, the government - consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can't get, and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time it is made good by looting 'A' to satisfy 'B'. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is a sort of advanced auction on stolen goods. — H.L. Mencken

On faith's battered back calm eyes etch prayers that cool a nation's hot rage. — Aberjhani

In a world gushing blood day and night, you never stop mopping up pain. — Aberjhani

April is the cruelest month, breeding
lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
memory and desire, stirring
dull roots with spring rain. — T. S. Eliot