Poets From The United States

"Not in rewards, but in the strength to strive, The blessing lies."

"The birds can fly, An' why can't I?"

"Of nothing comes nothing: springs rise not above Their source in the far-hidden heart of the mountains: Whence then have descended the Wisdom and Love That in man leap to light in intelligent fountains?"

"I keep some portion of my early gleam; Brokenly bright, like moonbeams on a river, It lights my life, a far illusive dream, Moves as I move, and leads me on forever."

"Louis Untermeyer was contributing poems which dealt with the realities of the class struggle, but which sounded a note of hope."

"England’s sun was slowly setting o’er the hill-tops far away, Filling all the land with beauty at the close of one sad day; And its last rays kissed the forehead of a man and maiden fair,— He with footsteps slow and weary; she with sunny, floating hair; He with bowed head, sad and thoughtful; she with lips so cold and white, Struggled to keep back the murmur, “Curfew must not ring to-night.”"

"I thought that the poets in the anthologies were the only real poets, that their being in the anthologies was proof of this, though some were classified as "great" and others as "minor." I owed much to those anthologies: Silver Pennies; the constant outflow of volumes edited by Louis Untermeyer; The Cambridge Book of Poetry for Children; Palgrave's Golden Treasury; the Oxford Book of English Verse. But I had no idea that they reflected the taste of a particular time or of particular kinds of people."

"The sunshine of thine eyes, (O still celestial beam!) Whatever it touches it fills With the life of its lambent gleam. The sunshine of thine eyes, Oh, let it fall on me! Though I be but a mote of the air, I could turn to gold for thee."

"To reveal man in relation to the universe the poet must show himself not only concerned with the immensities but with the trivialities of daily life, with a sense of the past continually interrupting the present."

"It takes a heap o’ children to make a home that’s true, And home can be a palace grand, or just a plain, old shoe; But if it has a mother dear, and a good old dad or two, Why, that’s the sort of good old home for good old me and you."

"Laughter shall drown the raucous shout; And, though these shelt’ring walls are thin, May they be strong to keep hate out And hold love in."

"For me the diamond dawns are set In rings of beauty, And all my ways are dewy wet With pleasant duty."

"I was raised in a fairly strict religious family and attended 16 years of Catholic schools. I feel now that my sense of the spiritual is directly connected to my sense of wonder, my ability to be amazed by the fact of my existence in all its vital impermanence AND by the spectacular environment I wake up to every morning. I am guessing that this sense of wonder is what the creator, if there is one, is still feeling."

"All poetry is the reproduction of the tones of speech"

"Darius was clearly of the opinion That the air is also man’s dominion, And that, with paddle or fin or pinion, We soon or late Shall navigate The azure, as now we sail the sea."

"The poet's dilemma..to create order in the midst of disorder"

"Novelists, playwrights, painters and others may hold in their heads the expectation of fame, but not poets. Having chosen that road, all one can dream of is the jealousy of one's rivals. Celebrity is unexpected and almost unseemly--it forces one to wear a constant look of chagrin, if that is possible. Unless you are Byron, who was the first poet to become a star. At its worst, fame means being known by strangers--enough to bring on waves of paranoia."

"For the translator of poetry, there is no activity that brings you into a closer, more intimate contact with language, both the second language and your own language, which translation allows you to experience freshly. Of course, translation is the impossible art which is why it attracts often the best minds, at least those driven by difficulty. The best metaphor I know for translation is from my friend Eamon Grennan, who translated the poems of Leopardi. It's like walking in a clear mountain stream, looking at colorful stones in the water. You find one so gorgeous, you put it in your pocket, take it home and put it on a shelf. In the morning you are surprised that the stone looks so dull and without luster. You have the stone, but you have removed it from the water of its home language so it has lost its luster."

"The complexity of women's undergarments in nineteenth-century America is not to be waved off, and I proceeded like a polar explorer through clips, clasps, and moorings, catches, straps, and whalebone stays, sailing toward the iceberg of her nakedness."

"It is important for the poet not to be emotional because you cannot see the world clearly with tears in your eyes."

"But tonight, the lion of contentment has placed a warm heavy paw on my chest."

"You will always be the bread and the knife, not to mention the crystal goblet and — somehow — the wine."

"This is the beginning. Almost anything can happen. This is where you find the creation of light, a fish wriggling onto land, the first word of Paradise Lost on an empty page. Think of an egg, the letter A, a woman ironing on a bare stage as the heavy curtain rises. This is the very beginning."

"Poetry in America is no longer a dirty word. While it is still far from the center of the culture, it is moving slowly inward from the margins. I believe more and more people are shedding their outmoded notions of poetry as an exotic hobby--the result of bad teaching and worse public image problems--and coming to the realization that poetry is about their lives. Poetry is about them."

"But tomorrow, dawn will come the way I picture her,barefoot and disheveled, standing outside my window in one of the fragile cotton dresses of the poor. She will look in at me with her thin arms extended, offering a handful of birdsong and a small cup of light."

"I love the sound of the bone against the plate and the fortress-like look of it lying before me in a moat of risotto, the meat soft as the leg of an angel who has lived a purely airborne existence. And best of all, the secret marrow, the invaded privacy of the animal prized out with a knife and wallowed down with cold, exhilarating wine."

"I find it impossible to think of "favorite" poets. I would rather list the ones I cannot stand."

"The person in the poem is a character like a character in fiction whom the poet has invented--without clothes or a family, or a place of birth, just a voice--to convey himself. Any resemblance he bears to the poet you meet on a signing line is slightly less than coincidental. Meeting the author is one of life's most reliably disappointing experiences, not because authors are such nasty people, but because you have already met them under the best possible circumstance--on the page."

"The underlying theme of Western poetry is mortality. The theme of carpe diem asks us to seize the day because we have only a limited number of them. To see life through the lens of death is to approach the condition of gratitude for the gift (or simply the fact) of our existence. And as Wallace Stevens said, Death is the mother of beauty. Only the perishable can be beautiful, which is why we are unmoved by artificial flowers."

"Wars begin through greed and vanity and are continued through the insanity of nationalism in which the boundaries of a land replace God."

"Yankee Doodle came to town Riding on a pony; Stuck a feather in his cap And called it Macaroni."

"I admired Crane very much; in fact, I still do...I have always been interested in that dichotomy and in that great paradox in our history. The clash between the pastoral and the technological, and Crane wrote about that, as did Whitman, as did Leo Marx, as have a lot of people. And certainly that has been one of the themes in my writing; that appeals to me a great deal; and Crane did a very good job with it in his poems, especially in the conception of "The Bridge" itself as a narrative. I like that very much. So he was a very important figure to me at the time and, though he is not as important to me now, he remains important. I think he was an important writer, and I felt about him at one time as I feel about Emily Dickinson now."

"I've always loved Hart Crane; but I love him in fractions, delighting in half a dozen of those rhapsodic poems long on style and short on sense but finding the rest mystifying as a Masonic ritual. In some of his best poems, I merely admire lines, and in some of those lines I merely admire phrases."

"O Sleepless as the river under thee, Vaulting the sea, the prairies’ dreaming sod, Unto us lowliest sometime sweep, descend And of the curveship lend a myth to God."

"Goodbye, everybody."

"the title I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is from [Paul Lawrence] Dunbar's "Sympathy.""

"His thoughts, delivered to me From the white coverlet and pillow, I see now, were inheritances— Delicate riders of the storm."

"I was always interested in fair play, probably from reading the works of Paul Dunbar, Langston Hughes, and Charles Dickens as a child. I was always concerned about justice and injustice. To the extent that I could understand the issues, I was always on the side of the underdog. I'm on the same side today."

"There are no stars to-night But those of memory. Yet how much room for memory there is In the loose girdle of soft rain."

"I know what the caged bird feels, alas! When the sun is bright on the upland slopes; When the wind blows soft through the springing grass, And the river floats like a stream of glass; When the first bird sings and the first bud opes, And the faint perfume from its chalice steals— I know what the caged bird feels! I know why the caged bird beats his wing Till its blood is red on the cruel bars; For he must fly back to his perch and cling When he fain would be on the bough a-swing; And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars And they pulse again with a keener sting— I know why he beats his wing! I know why the caged bird sings, ah me, When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,— When he beats his bars and he would be free; It is not a carol of joy or glee, But a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core, But a plea that upward to Heaven he flings— I know why the caged bird sings!"

"We wear the mask that grins and lies, It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,— This debt we pay to human guile; With torn and bleeding hearts we smile, And mouth with myriad subtleties. Why should the world be over-wise, In counting all our tears and sighs? Nay, let them only see us, while We wear the mask. We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries To thee from tortured souls arise. We sing, but oh the clay is vile Beneath our feet, and long the mile; But let the world dream otherwise, We wear the mask!"

"I started writing when I was mute. I always thought I could write because I loved to read so much. I loved the melody of Poe and I loved Paul Laurence Dunbar. I had memorized so much of Dunbar, Poe, Shakespeare, James Weldon Johnson, Longfellow. When my son was able to be quiet enough to listen, I taught him those poets. A few years ago he gave a reading of his poetry and he started the reading by saying 'First, let me recite to you some of the poets my mother raised me on . . .'"

"And Thee, across the harbor, silver-paced As though the sun took step of thee, yet left Some motion ever unspent in thy stride, Implicitly thy freedom staying thee!"

"An angel, robed in spotless white, Bent down and kissed the sleeping Night. Night woke to blush; the sprite was gone. Men saw the blush and called it Dawn."

"It is a little dark still, but there are warnings of the day and somewhere out of the darkness a bird is singing to the Dawn."

"Because you love me I have much achieved, Had you despised me then I must have failed, But since I knew you trusted and believed, I could not disappoint you and so prevailed."

"O harp and altar, of the fury fused, (How could mere toil align thy choiring strings!) Terrific threshold of the prophet’s pledge, Prayer of pariah, and the lover’s cry,"

"You are sweet, O Love, dear Love, You are soft as the nesting dove. Come to my heart and bring it rest As the bird flies home to its welcome nest."

"My thoughts are crowded with death and it draws so oddly on the sexual that I am confused confused to be attracted by, in effect, my own annihilation."

"Distorting hackneyed words in hackneyed songs He turns revolt into a style, prolongs The impulse to a habit of the time."