“The lamp you lighted in the olden time Will show you my heart's-blood beating through the rhyme: A poet's journal, writ in fire and tears... Then slow deliverance, with the gaps of years.” YearsHeartShowsPoetryFireBloodTearsPoetMy HeartGapsJournalRhymeLampsDeliveranceOlden Times Book:The Poems of Bayard Taylor Source: The Poems of Bayard Taylor
“Rash combat oft immortalizes man; if he should fall, he is renowned in song; but after-ages reckon not the ceaseless tears which the forsaken woman sheds. Poets tell us not of the many nights consumed in weeping, or of the dreary days wherein her anguished soul vainly yearns to call her loved one back.” IfsMenShouldSoulAgeNightSongFallTearsHe ManPoetSorrowFameCombatLoved OnesShedConsumedWeepingDrearyForsakenRenowned Author:Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“I would hardly change the sorrowful words of the poets for their glad ones. Tears dampen the strings of the lyre, but they grow the tensor for it, and ring even the clearer and more ravishingly.” GrowsTearsPoetRingsGladStringsSorrowful Author:James Russell Lowell
“I do not suppose that anyone not a poet can realize the agony of creating a poem. Every nerve, even every muscle, seems strained to the breaking point. The poem will not be denied; to refuse to write it would be a greater torture. It tears its way out of the brain, splintering and breaking its passage, and leaves that organ in the state of a jelly-fish when the task is done.” WayWritingStatesDoneSeemsWould BePoetryRealizingBrainGreaterTearsPoetCreatingTasksFishesRefuseTortureMusclesNervesPassagesDeniedOrgansAgonyJellyPoint Break Author:Amy Lowell
“Too many poets act like a middle-aged mother trying to get her kids to eat too much cooked meat, and potatoes with drippings (tears). I don't give a damn whether they eat or not. Forced feeding leads to excessive thinness (effete). Nobody should experience anything they don't need to, if they don't need poetry bully for them. I like the movies too. And after all, only Whitman and Crane and Williams, of the American poets, are better than the movies.” IfsNeedsGivingShouldTryingKidsMotherToo MuchMiddleTearsPoetDamnMeatFeedingBullyPotatoesMiddle AgedDrippingDon't Give A DamnCranesI Don't Give A DamnThinnessMeat And Potatoes Author:Frank O'Hara
“It may be safely affirmed that there neither is, nor can be, any essential difference between the language of prose and metrical composition.... They both speak by and to the same organs; the bodies in which both of them are clothed may be said to be of the same substance, their affections are kindred, and almost identical, not necessarily differing even in degree; Poetry sheds no tears "such as Angels weep," but natural and human tears; she can boast of no celestial ichor that distinguishes her vital juices from those of prose; the same human blood circulates through the veins of them both.” HumansMaySaidBodyPoetrySpeakLanguageNaturalDifferencesBloodTearsPoetEssentialsDegreesAngelAffectionSubstanceProseOrgansShedCompositionVeinsBoastJuiceIdenticalCelestialKindred Author:William Wordsworth
“Song, like a wing, tears through my breast, my side, And madness chooses out my voice again, Again.” PoetrySongSidesVoiceTearsPoetMadnessWingsBreasts Book:Poems and new poems Source: Poems and new poems
“The life and vigor of poetry consists of the fact that it steps out of itself, tears out a section of religion, then withdraws into itself to assimilate it. The same is true of philosophy.” PhilosophyFactsPoetryStepsTearsPoetSectionsVigor Author:Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
“Poetry is the sister of Sorrow. Every man that suffers and weeps is a poet; every tear is a verse, and every heart a poem.” MenHeartPoetrySufferingTearsPoetSorrowEvery ManPoetry IsVerses Author:Marc-Andre Fleury
“I pulled a book by Robinson Jeffers off the shelf one day. It was powerfully moving. Tears ran down my face. That's when I became a poet.” BookFacesMovingPoetryTearsPoetOne DayRanShelves Author:William Everson
“Has anyone...any distinct notion of what poets of a stronger age understood by the word inspiration? ... There is an ecstasy such that the immese strain of it is sometimes relaxed by a flood of tears, along with which one's steps either rush or involuntarily lag, alternately. There is the feeling that one is completely out of hand, with the very distinct consciousness of an endless number of fine thrills and quiverings to the very toes... Everything happens quite involuntarily, as if in a tempestuous outburst of freedom, of absoluteness, of power and divinity.” IfsSometimesFeelingsHandsInspirationHappensAgeNumbersConsciousnessStepsTearsPoetFineUnderstoodStrongerNotionThings HappenEndlessDivinityEcstasyFloodToesStrainRelaxedLagOutburst Author:Friedrich Nietzsche