Poetic Writing Quotes

“This is a simple story, but it spooks me, insofar as it reminds me that the eye is simply a recorder, with or without our will. Perhaps the same could be said of the heart. But whether there is a violence at work here remains undecided.”
― Maggie Nelson, Bluets

“And who is to say this afterimage is not equally real? Indigo makes its stain not in the dyeing vat, but after the garment has been removed. It is the oxygen of the air that blues it.”
― Maggie Nelson, Bluets

“Ultramarine is not, of course, holy in and of itself. (What is?) It had to be made holy, by the wicked logic that renders the expensive sacred.”
― Maggie Nelson, Bluets

“Daily I think about moving the most vulnerable objects to a "cool, dark place," but the truth is that I have little to no instinct for protection. Out of laziness, curiosity, or cruelty—if one can be cruel to objects—I have given them up to their diminishment.”
― Maggie Nelson, Bluets

“I am writing all this down in blue ink, so as to remember that all words, not just some, are written in water.”
― Maggie Nelson, Bluets

“Touching the face of the wind, dark wings flex and ease. They read the wisps of clouds forming above them, the dark heaves of mountains below. Now the sudden bounce of a thermal, now the yank of a downdraft, The birds of my mind tilt and swing as I lie in the blue bus, until finally, their taut wings bank up against the wind and they streak out of my head, peeling off one by one, like canoes that have been pointing upstream, arcing back into the roll of the river.”
― Anne Batterson, The Black Swan: Memory, Midlife, and Migration

“Sonnet of Poetry

Poet is no servant of the dictionary,
Dictionary is servant to the poet.
Poet is no servant of language,
Language is servant to the poet.
It's poetry that makes the language,
Language makes no poetry, my friend.
Poet exists not to serve a linguist's whim,
But to breathe life into human language.
I've said repeatedly, language has limitations,
Only with poetry we can surpass some of 'em.
Sticklers for grammar make lousy poets,
If feeling doesn't surpass grammar, poetry it ain't.
Poetry is the most potent of all literary forms.
If prose is candle light, poetry is dawn.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Honor He Wrote: 100 Sonnets For Humans Not Vegetables

“Peace, I seek to deck my passion, for I Love you much Calliope, the fine voice: as It belongs to a never discouraging land, where Moon it never wans and Music raves high.”
― Nithin Purple