"Thus for each blunt-faced ignorant one The great grey rigid uniform combined Safety with virtue of the sun. Thus concepts linked like chainmail in the mind."

"These seem like bristles, and the hide is tough. No claw or web here: each foot ends in hoof."

"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."

"Whereas James Weldon Johnson believed that the recognition of an African American literary tradition would end racism in the United States, I believe that the recognition of Afro-Latin@ poetry will bring to light new structures of racism that have emerged and entrenched themselves as this country has become increasingly multi-cultural and multi-ethnic...Latin@s have been at the center of African American verse since its inception, as evidenced by Weldon Johnson's discussion of and admiration for black poets in Latin America. Likewise, connections between Harlem Renaissance poets and Afro-Latin American poets are numerous. This is an artistic connection that has grown within the United States"

"And God stepped out on space, And He looked around and said, "I'm lonely— I'll make me a world.""

"So God stepped over to the edge of the world And He spat out the seven seas; He batted His eyes, and the lightnings flashed; He clapped His hands, and the thunders rolled; And the waters above the earth came down, The cooling waters came down."

"Some men enjoy the constant strife Of days with work and worry rife, But that is not my dream of life: I think such men are crazy. For me, a life with worries few, A job of nothing much to do, Just pelf enough to see me through: I fear that I am lazy."

"And God smiled again, And the rainbow appeared, And curled itself around his shoulder."

"The glory of the day was in her face, The beauty of the night was in her eyes. And over all her loveliness, the grace Of Morning blushing in the early skies."

"You sang far better than you knew; the songs That for your listeners’ hungry hearts sufficed Still live,—but more than this to you belongs: You sang a race from wood and stone to Christ."

"And Satan smiled, stretched out his hand, and said,— "O War, of all the scourges of humanity, I crown you chief.""

"With his head in his hands, God thought and thought, Till he thought: I'll make me a man!"

"It is from the blues that all that may be called American music derives its most distinctive characteristic."

"How would you have us, as we are? Or sinking 'neath the load we bear? Our eyes fixed forward on a star? Or gazing empty at despair?"

"The glory of the day was in her face, The beauty of the night was in her eyes."

"O black and unknown bards of long ago, How came your lips to touch the sacred fire? How, in your darkness, did you come to know The power and beauty of the minstrels' lyre?"

"This Great God, Like a mammy bending over her baby, Kneeled down in the dust Toiling over a lump of clay Till He shaped it in His own image."

"Father, Father Abraham, To-day look on us from above; On us, the offspring of thy faith, The children of thy Christ-like love."

"Every race and every nation should be judged by the best it has been able to produce, not by the worst."

"Whose starward eye Saw chariot “swing low”? And who was he That breathed that comforting, melodic sigh, “Nobody knows de trouble I see”?"

"Lift every voice and sing Till earth and heaven ring, Ring with the harmonies of Liberty. Let our rejoicing rise high as the listening skies; Let it resound loud as the rolling sea."

"We have come over a way that with tears has been watered, We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered."

"Find Sister Caroline... And she's tired— She's weary— Go down, Death, and bring her to me."

"I am a thing not new, I am as old As human nature. I am that which lurks, Ready to spring whenever a bar is loosed; The ancient trait which fights incessantly Against restraint, balks at the upward climb; The weight forever seeking to obey The law of downward pull;—and I am more: The bitter fruit am I of planted seed; The resultant, the inevitable end Of evil forces and the powers of wrong."

"The colored people of this country know and understand the white people better than the white people know and understand them."

"Young man—Young man—Your arm’s too short to box with God."

"Eternities before the first-born day, Or ere the first sun fledged his wings of flame, Calm Night, the everlasting and the same, A brooding mother over chaos lay."

"Logic is a carpet laid over an abyss."

"There was nothing like shared meals, so the experts at IBM claimed, for overcoming one's basic disbelief in the existence of other people."

"The gods, after all, are only human, and once their rage has been placated they are perfectly capable of acts of mercy and grace."

"...there, strung out under the cornice of the building, was the motto, which he had never noticed before, of the Federal Communications Agency:"

"He especially liked ads for shampoos and hair coloring. The women in them seemed to regard their hair as independent, capricious entities, whom they must placate and provide with food."

"Religious faith often finds itself at odds with story-telling. Puritans ban acting companies. Islam is uneasy about all forms of representation. And why? Because the experience of walking out of the theater after a performance is a paradigm of disillusionment, and religious people are officially supposed to believe, first and foremost, in their own literal faith, from which there are no exits. They've taken the big leap, and live, ever after, in free fall."

"All the things that happen and seem so important at the time, and yet you forget them, one after another."

"Jobs are like going to church: it’s nice once or twice a year to sing along and eat something and all that, but unless you really believe there’s something holy going on, it gets to be a drag going in every single week."

"Boz, who had no patience with Science, always confused north and south."

"The way we work, the way we talk, the way we watch television or walk down the street, even the way we fuck, or maybe that especially—each of those is part of the problem of identity. We can’t do any of those things authentically until we find out who we really are and be that person, inside and out, instead of the person other people want us to be. Usually those other people, if they want us to be something we aren’t, are using us as a laboratory for working out their own identity problems."

"Marvin Kolodny responded with a boyish grin and offered his hand. An American flag has been tattooed on his right forearm. On a scroll circling the flagpole was the following inscription:"

"People in intolerable circumstances will pray to anything. Truly, there are no atheists in foxholes: the men there pray to the bombs that they may land somewhere else."

"By practice and conviction formed, With ancient stubbornness ingrained, Although her body clung and swarmed, My own identity remained."

"And there, a field rat, startled, squealing bleeds, His belly close to ground. I see the blade, Blood-stained, continue cutting weeds and shade"

"The land is numb. It stands beneath the feet, and one may come Walking securely, till the sea extends Its limber margin, and precision ends."

"O singers, resinous and soft your songs Above the sacred whisper of the pines, Give virgin lips to cornfield concubines, Bring dreams of Christ to dusky cane-lipped throngs."

"The rain of matter upon sense Destroys me momently. The score: There comes what will come."

"Metal, intrinsic value, deep and dense, Preanimate, inimitable, still, Real, but an evil with no human sense, Dispersed the mind to concentrate the will."

"What end impersonal, what breathless age, Incontinent of quiet and of years, What calm catastrophe will yet assuage This final drouth of penitential tears?"

"Superstition saw Something it had never seen before: Brown eyes that loved without a trace of fear, Beauty so sudden for that time of year."

"To say that a poet is justified in employing a disintegrating form in order to express a feeling of disintegration, is merely a sophistical justification for bad poetry, akin to the Whitmanian notion that one must write loose and sprawling poetry to 'express' the loose and sprawling American continent. In fact, all feeling, if one gives oneself (that is, one's form) up to it, is a way of disintegration; poetic form is by definition a means to arrest the disintegration and order the feeling; and in so far as any poetry tends toward the formless, it fails to be expressive of anything."

"I mean to indicate the reading of poetry not merely for the sensual ear, but for the mind's ear as well; yet the mind's ear can be trained only by the other, and the matter, practically considered, comes inescapably back to the reading of poetry aloud."