Quotes About Expression

The poet does not use poetry, but is at the service of poetry. To use it is to misuse it.

To speak of sorrow works upon it moves it from its crouched place barring the way to and from the soul's hall.

When I am a woman — O, when I am a woman, my wells of salt brim and brim, poems force the lock of my throat.

Words taken by lips, tongue, teeth, throat, down into body's caverns, to enter blood, bone, breath

Hugh Kenner, in a lecture, beautifully defined what poets seek if they really are poets) as "the power to make things as moving as the things they have been moved by.

There comes a time when only anger is love.

The poem has a social effect of some kind whether or not the poet wills it to have. It has a kenetic force, it sets in motion...elements in the reader that would otherwise remain stagnant.

His head was tipped back, eyes shut tight as he murdered Neil Young's "Heart of Gold.

Calling pronouns like ze and hir "new pronouns" or "neopronouns" is misleading too, because these words are relatively old. They may be enjoying a renaissance today, but ze appears in 1864, introduced by someone known only by the initials J. W. L., and hir first popped up a century ago, invented, or at least introduced to readers in California, by the editor of the Sacramento Bee on August 14, 1920.

You see, that is it with music, you never stop learning.

Can you be more clear?" No. When I try, my beliefs or desires come out beautiful. They are beautiful to me, but I cannot understand them in that form.

Art isn't life, you know. It if were, the world would go up in flames. It's artifice. By definition. ("Talking In The Dark")

Poetry is plucking at the heartstrings, and making music with them.

Creativity is an ability given to us at birth, and thankfully, it cannot be lost. Creativity only goes into hiding and lies dormant from lack of

And mostly I believe the artists further the systematic murder of the real

I write mysteries to say something, not just for entertainment

As Stephen Spender put it, "Music is the most powerful of all the idealist drugs except religion.

There's a better way. There has to be education, and the education has to come from the poets and musicians, because it has to touch the heart rather than the intellect, it has to get in there deeply.

if I had known to what use they [Southerners] were going to put my song, I will be damned if I'd have written it.

Living closer to the center of our being is the practice of a lifetime, but so, too, is skillfully living on the horizontal plane-the surface of life-where our purpose for being on the planet is uniquely expressed. Redefining moments are simply energy vortexes that draw the authentic self up (vertically) and out (horizontally) and into present moment awareness, revealing it to the light of day and the gifts it holds.

I rant, therefore I am.

It's your living room, it's your life, go nuts. You like Home Improvement ? Tape it and go over it like it's the Zapruder film.

My desire to tell is stronger than my shame to deny.

Children can write poetry and then, unless they're poets, they stop when reach puberty.