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Poets Quotes

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Poets Quotes

“Although my road to writing seems like it may have come easily, there were a few bumps in that road. I didn’t get a lot of encouragement from friends, although my family were great supporters. I also had many…what you would call “mind-boggling” moments, when I would doubt myself and what I was writing. It has been said that we, ourselves, are our own worst critics. All the hard work had payed off though, and I created a children’s book that I am proud of, and an unforgettable little girl that will touch the hearts of many.”-Nina Jean Slack”

“Always write exactly what you’re feeling at the exact moment when writing something like poetry or an emotional novel. Put yourself, pour all emotions into your work…make yourself cry, feel joy if you are writing joyful things, feel lovey if it calls for it…just put your heart and soul into all that you do…then you will be a good writer when you can make whoever reads your work, feel." -Nina Jean Slack”

“Musicians do not get on stage without hearing the song singing inside of them. Poets do not write as if they are jotting down a sermon, they see everything in their subconscious before presenting it to the conscious, which they later turn to  readable materials. Artist do not draw and paint without painting in dream states, trance, or see an art form that others do not see. Being creative does not calls for being any supernatural entity, but in creating with the entities inside of you.”

“If you were destined to be a poet, then you won't brainstorm for lines that rhymes. If you were destined to be a celebrity, then you shouldn't start searching for fans. If you are truly a god, then let others worship you!”

“Poets who write mostly about love, roses and moonlight, sunsets and snow, must lead a very quiet life. Seldom, I imagine, does their poetry get them into difficulties. Beauty and lyricism are really related to another world, to ivory towers, to your head in the clouds, feet floating off the earth. Unfortunately, having been born poor--and also colored--in Missouri, I was stuck in the mud from the beginning. Try as I might to float off into the clouds, poverty and Jim Crow would grab me by the heels, and right back on earth I would land.”

“So goes the life of social poet. I am sure none of these things would ever have happened to me had I limited the subject matter of my poems to roses and moonlight. But, unfortunately, I was born poor--and colored--and almost all the prettiest roses I have seen have been in rich white people's yards--not in mine. That is why I cannot write exclusively about roses and moonlight--for sometimes in the moonlight my brothers see a fiery cross and a circle of Klansmen's hoods. Sometimes in the moonlight a dark body sways from a lynching tree--but for his funeral there are no roses.”

“When a despot ineptly sought to turn a country to a totalitarian nightmare, where was poetry? It wasn't sleeping. It kept the poets up at night. We wrote against despair toward beauty, toward a truth that could imprison us for making liars out of the fools deposited in the seats of power, kept there by puppets who kneeled in piles of promissory notes.”

“Soldiers were shot outside a poet’s door and a bomber plane was on its way. So he took his manuscript, folded it, and locked it into a tin chest. There was a place east of town where it could be safely buried and found by another someday. He ran out during battle, was shot multiple times in his legs, slithered his way in a swamp of gushing muscle, and alas, could not make it. So, in desperation, he opened up the holes in his stomach and inserted the tin chest where his poems lie safe and died there. One day, a medic will read about birds that chirped on emerald trees.”

“I want to snatch away your broken heart somewhere far away Away In a cave so peaceful, I would sing for you a song In sweetest voice possible that fill up your wounds as the storm passes away....... Keep you hidden from the world, keep you safe from the torment In any possible way...... I want to collect so many....Just like you In one place Dun look at me, what I do, who I am.....I am just.... Jusss someone who's unconditionally In love with hearts that have experienced so much pain Let me take you away, I wanna put a smile on your face.”

“I don’t understand why? Why me? Why now? Why does everything happen at once? We fall apart, just like that. Everything was fine, then it all turns to dust. I don’t understand why nothing feels right? Why I can’t fight for my rights? Why do my days melt together like snow? It hurts me to know That you might not make it below. This horrible time in our lives, Day by day, night by night. Will I ever understand? Will this feeling ever end? Can the frayed be made amend? I can’t talk to anyone. I can’t let it out. I’m gonna blow up, I gotta get out. Can you hear me? Restore my peace? Why? I don’t understand. Please put the broken pieces Of my life back together and attend To the needs of my screams. Someone listen to me, please.”

“Poets! Towers of God Made to resist the fury of the storms Like cliffs beside the ocean Or clouded, savage peaks! Masters of lightning! Breakwaters of eternity! Hope, magic-voiced, foretells the day When on the rock of harmony The Siren traitorous shall die and pass away, And there shall only be The full, frank-billowed music of the sea. Be hopeful still, Though bestial elements yet turn From Song with rancorous ill-will And blinded races one another spurn! Perversity debased Among the high her rebel cry has raised. The cannibal still lusts after the raw, Knife-toothed and gory-faced. Towers, your laughing banners now unfold. Against all hatreds and all envious lies Upraise the protest of the breeze, half-told, And the proud quietness of sea and skies…”