poets-from-the-united-states

"We age inevitably: The old joys fade and are gone: And at last comes equanimity and the flame burning clear."

"They can only set free men free... And there is no need of that: Free men set themselves free."

"Up in the heights of the evening skies I see my City of Cities float In sunset’s golden and crimson dyes: I look, and a great joy clutches my throat! Plateau of roofs by canyons crossed: windows by thousands fire-unfurled— O gazing, how the heart is lost in the Deepest City of the World!"

"To be a god First I must be a god-maker: We are what we create."

"Hadn't he been blowing kisses to Earth millions of years before I was born?"

"Hearts starve as well as bodies: Give us Bread, but give us Roses."

"Man's the bad child of the universe."

"Would you end war? Create great Peace."

"Quick as a hummingbird is my love, Dipping into the hearts of flowers—She darts so eagerly, swiftly, sweetly, Dipping into the flowers of my heart..."

"Aye, think! Since time and life began, Your mind has only feared and slept; Of all the beasts they called you man Only because you toiled and wept."

"The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance; The wise grows it under his feet."

"For him delicious flavors dwell In books as in old Muscatel."

"You are the king no doubt, but in one respect, at least, I am your equal: the right to reply. I claim that privilege too. I am not your slave. I serve Apollo. I don't need Creon to speak for me in public. So, you mock my blindness? Let me tell you this. You with your precious eyes, you're blind to the corruption in your life, to the house you live in, those you live with— who are your parents? Do you know? All unknowing you are the scourge of your own flesh and blood, the dead below the earth and the living here above, and the double lash of your mother and your father's curse will whip you from this land one day, their footfall treading you down in terror, darkness shrouding your eyes that now can see the light! Soon, soon, you'll scream aloud—what haven won't reverberate? What rock of Cithaeron won't scream back in echo? That day you learn the truth about your marriage, the wedding-march that sang you into your halls, the lusty voyage home to the fatal harbor! And a crowd of other horrors you'd never dream will level you with yourself and all your children. There. Now smear us with insults—Creon, myself and every word I've said. No man will ever be rooted from the earth as brutally as you."

"And in the evening, everywhere Along the roadside, up and down, I see the golden torches flare Like lighted street-lamps in the town."

"The hunter catches a dreadful prey, the seaman steers his ship into an unspeakable harbor, the plowman sows and reaps a fearful harvest, the investigator finds the criminal and the judge convicts him—they are all the same man—the revealer turns into the thing revealed, the finder into the thing found, the calculator finds he is himself the solution of the equation and the physician discovers that he is the disease. The catastrophe of the tragic hero thus becomes the catastrophe of fifth-century man; all his furious energy and intellectual daring drive him on to this terrible discovery of his fundamental ignorance—he is not the measure of all things but the thing measured and found wanting."

"Song like a rose should be; Each rhyme a petal sweet; For fragrance, melody, That when her lips repeat The words, her heart may know What secret makes them so:— Love, only Love!"

"Arise, O Soul, and gird thee up anew, Though the black camel Death kneel at thy gate; No beggar thou that thou for alms shouldst sue; Be the proud captain still of thine own fate!"

"Our Country!—'tis a glorious land— With broad arms stretched from shore to shore;— The proud Pacific chafes her strand, She hears the dark Atlantic roar; And nurtured on her ample breast, How many a goodly prospect lies; In Nature's wildest grandeur drest, Enamelled with her loveliest dyes."

"Great God! we thank Thee for this home— This bounteous birth-land of the Free; Where wanderers from afar may come, And breathe the air of Liberty;— Still may her flowers untrampled spring, Her harvests wave, her cities rise; And yet till Time shall fold his wing, Remain earth's loveliest Paradise!"

"When Hector heard that challenge he rejoiced and right in the no man's land along his lines he strode, gripping his spear mid-haft, staving men to a standstill while Agamemnon seated his Argives geared for combat. And Apollo lord of the silver bow and Queen Athena, for all the world like carrion birds, like vultures, slowly settled atop the broad towering oak sacred to Zeus whose battle-shield is thunder, relishing those men."

""I'm tired," I says. She says, "I know you are, but you can't stop now Precious, you gotta push." And I do."

"To be a woman and a writer is double mischief, for the world will slight her who slights "the servile house," and who would rather make odes than beds."

"death is where jimi hendrix is, where our revolution ended up."

"There has always been something wrong wif the tesses. The tesses paint a picture of me wif no brain. The tesses paint a picture of me an' my muver—my whole family, we more than dumb, we invisible."

"An interviewer once asked him whether he had any advice for young writers starting out. "No," he answered, "if a writer is going to get anywhere, he doesn't listen to anybody.""

"Poetry is everywhere; it just needs editing."

"the farmer takes Jill down the well & all the king's horses & all the king's men can't put that baby together again crooked man crooked man pumpkin eater childhood stealer."

"When all is said and all is done, When all is lost or all is won— In spite of musty theory, Of purblind faith and vain conceit, Of barren creed and sophistry; In spite of all—success, defeat— The judge applies to worst and best, Impartially, this final test:What hast thou done with brawn and brain, To help the world to lose or gain An onward step? Canst reckon one Unselfish, brave or noble deed That thou—nor counting cost—hast done To help a brother's crying need? Not what professed nor what believed— But what good thing hast thou achieved!"

"The Arkansawyers are of the type of the old Hoosiers, Crackers, Pikers, and the Big Smoky mountaineers. The Hoosiers themselves were descendants of the bond-servants of Colonial days and being of low degree sought their own kind while the great migration going "out West" moved along the Ohio. They settled in the malaria swamps of Indiana and Illinois, but that was on the highway to empire and civilization drove them out. They colonized again in Pike County, Missouri, and made the name "Piker" notorious throughout the West as denoting a fellow of feeble wit and feebler initiative. Other migrations of the bondservant stock found their way into Arkansas, and as no strong tribe followed them into this retreat they were never driven out again. "Crackers," descendants of the Georgia convict colony, also found refuge in Arkansas. The mountain people, too, came gradually onward, proliferating in their beloved highlands till they crossed the Mississippi and peopled the Ozarks. But these people are not mentally dull nor physically inefficient. They are simply a highland race that loves solitude and scorns comfort, literature, and luxury.These three strains, the mountain people, the Crackers, and the Piker numskulls, have united to make the Arkansas nation; for they are a nation, as distinct from the other peoples in America as is a Swede from a Dane. Whenever Arkansawyers appear in Kansas, California, South Carolina, or Texas the natives hold up their hands in horror, fearing that their Spartan State will be erased by the obliterating helot swarm. The high wages in the agricultural Northwest during the World War drew a few Arkansawyers to Nebraska, whither they took their dogs and women, their customs and ideals—and labored for the Swedish and Teutonic farmers. The sturdy Nebraskans (from North Europe) were shocked by the general worthlessness of the Arkansawyers and were heard to declare: "If they keep on letting that kind of people into this country, America has gone to hell.""

"King David and King Solomon Led merry, merry lives, With many, many lady friends, And many, many wives; But when old age crept over them— With many, many qualms, King Solomon wrote the Proverbs And King David wrote the Psalms."

"Physically the Low Country retains its glamorous air under the scourings and sweepings of industrial change. 'Down on the salt,' as they say, the sea-islands still offer their long, palmetto-fringed beaches and their wide green marshes to the enormous sky. A little way inland the dense woods hung with grey Spanish moss, the nostalgic ruins of plantation houses destroyed by war or fire, the cypress pools of clear black water in which the herons stand like fabulous white blooms on their stalks — these trappings of the Gothic romances have their old power to stir the imagination."

"Augustus sat hunched on the sofa, strangely shrunken; even the Charvet dressing gown had an air of ruin."

"This, in a way, would be exceeding odd And almost justify man’s ways to God— If, by the healing of these hills, the blind Receive an inner sight, and leave behind Their narrow greed, their numbing fears, and fare Forth with new souls to breathe the honest air;If rich man, poor man, lawyer, merchant, thief Declare with one accord that they'd as lief Laugh and forget, and make a gracious truce With sea and mountain; learn again the use Of earth and sky and ocean-ranging breeze, And dance, and dance beneath the pepper trees."

"When people discuss religion, it is a pity that they often become excited and argue. We should merely listen, as one does on a dark night; we should merely gaze at the stars."

"Free people make the only milieu possible in society for the full gift of one's self to church, state, and family. Free people enjoy and sustain and feel with one another because they live for one another. The paths of life are intermingled lives."

"The most frightening pages of history are those which reveal how easily conditions making a desert of the human spirit may come into existence, with the oozings away of incentive and kindliness in our natural social structure."

"I do not believe that we can stop perfecting new ways of dying until we have found new ways of living. Every new life-way ought to prevent a new death-way."

"The joy late coming late departs."

"O, once in each man's life, at least, Good luck knocks at his door; And wit to seize the flitting guest Need never hunger more. But while the loitering idler waits Good luck beside his fire, The bold heart storms at fortune's gates, And conquers its desire."

"Certainly there are great men whose age circumscribes them so completely that we lose interest."

"Cruel and cold is the judgment of man, Cruel as winter, and cold as the snow; But by and by will the deed and the plan Be judged by the motive that lieth below."

"When I meet a new person, I am on the lookout for signs of what he or she is loyal to. It is a preliminary clue to the sense of belonging, and hence of his or her humanity."

"So much of what is best in us is bound up in our love of family, that it remains the measure of our stability because it measures our sense of loyalty. All other pacts of love or fear derive from it and are modeled upon it."

"To strip a man of all loyalties but those to the state, makes him not only a worm but a monster, without a shred of humanity."

"I am no theologian. I am a layman. I am among those who are preached to, and who listen. It is not for me to preach. I should not willingly forego being a listener, a man who reads the Gospels and then listens to what others say that our Lord meant. But sometimes a listener speaks out, and listens to his own voice."

"Each of us is a being in himself and a being in society, each of us needs to understand himself and understand others, take care of others and be taken care of himself."

"A man's motive in the small actions of daily life, like resting a moment on his pitchfork in the sun and listening intently, may be the most important thing about that man."

"All poets and story-tellers alive today make a single brotherhood; they are engaged in a single work, picturing our human life. Whoever pictures life as he sees it, re-assembles in his own way the details of existence which affect him deeply, and so creates a spiritual world of his own."

"Has a man any fault a woman cannot weave with and try to change into something better, if the god her man prays to is a mother holding a baby?"

"A gang is the same as a wolf pack; gang members do not use their energies in friendship with one another, for they do not know what friendship is. If they are united, it is by the common bond of a desire to attack their world."