The poet, as everyone knows, must strike his individual note sometime between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five. He may read more

The poet, as everyone knows, must strike his individual note sometime between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five. He may hold it a long time, or a short time, but it is then that he must strike it or never. School and college have been conducted with the almost express purpose of keeping him busy with something else till the danger of his ever creating anything is past.

It is the job of poetry to clean up our word-clogged reality by creating silences around things.

It is the job of poetry to clean up our word-clogged reality by creating silences around things.

CONSIDERING THE VOID
When I behold the charm
of evening skies, their lulling endurance;
the patterns of stars with read more

CONSIDERING THE VOID
When I behold the charm
of evening skies, their lulling endurance;
the patterns of stars with names
of bears and dogs, a swan, a virgin;
other planets that the Voyager showed
were like and so unlike our own,
with all their diverse moons,
bright discs, weird rings, and cratered faces;
comets with their streaming tails
bent by pressure from our sun;
the skyscape of our Milky Way
holding in its shimmering disc
an infinity of suns
(or say a thousand billion);
knowing there are holes of darkness
gulping mass and even light,
knowing that this galaxy of ours
is one of multitudes
in what we call the heavens,
it troubles me. It troubles me.
-President Jimmy Carter- (he has written a volume of poetry as well as a novel, The Hornet's Nest,
about the Revolutionary War).

A poet is a man who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning read more

A poet is a man who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or six times.

Poets arent very usefulBecause they aren't consumeful or produceful..

Poets arent very usefulBecause they aren't consumeful or produceful..

Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows, and of lending existence to nothing.

Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows, and of lending existence to nothing.

As civilization advances, poetry almost necessarily declines.

As civilization advances, poetry almost necessarily declines.

Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.

Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.

Poetry is the art of creating imaginary gardens with real toads.

Poetry is the art of creating imaginary gardens with real toads.