Karl Shapiro Quotes and Sayings - Page 1
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“Poetry is innocent, not wise. It does not learn from experience, because each poetic experience is unique.”
-- Karl Shapiro -
“The modern essay has regained a good deal of its literary status in our time, much to the credit of Joseph Epstein.”
-- Karl Shapiro -
“Every war is its own excuse. That's why they're all surrounded with ideals. That's why they're all crusades.”
-- Karl Shapiro -
“Self-knowledge is a dangerous thing, tending to make man shallow or insane.”
-- Karl Shapiro -
“Poets of course are even more unpredictable than other writers, overwhelmed as they are by the moment they inhabit and finding it difficult to connect yesterday with tomorrow.”
-- Karl Shapiro -
“The proverbist knows nothing of the two sides of a question. He knows only the roundness of answers.”
-- Karl Shapiro -
“Lawyers love paper. They eat, sleep and dream paper. They turn paper into gold, and their files are colorful and their language neoclassical and calli-graphically bewigged.”
-- Karl Shapiro -
“A man's house is his stage. Others walk on to play their bit parts. Now and again a soliloquy, a birth, an adultery.”
-- Karl Shapiro -
“How something important happens is the business of historians and newspapers, the effect it has is the business of philosophers and writers and especially poets.”
-- Karl Shapiro -
“To make the child in your own image is a capital crime, for your image is not worth repeating. The child knows this and you know it. Consequently you hate each other.”
-- Karl Shapiro -
“My soul is now her day, my day her night, So I lie down, and so I rise.”
-- Karl Shapiro -
“The body, what is it, Father, but a sign To love the force that grows us, to give back What in Thy palm is senselessness and mud?”
-- Karl Shapiro -
“The good poet sticks to his real loves, to see within the realm of possibility. He never tries to hold hands with God or the human race.”
-- Karl Shapiro -
“Already old, the question Who shall die? Becomes unspoken Who is innocent?”
-- Karl Shapiro -
“But with exquisite breathing you smile, with satisfaction of love, And I touch you again as you tick in the silence and settle in sleep.”
-- Karl Shapiro -
“Laughter and grief join hands. Always the heart Clumps in the breast with heavy stride; The face grows lined and wrinkled like a chart, The eyes bloodshot with tears and tide. Let the wind blow, for many a man shall die.”
-- Karl Shapiro -
“Leo Connellan has retained his soul and voice in Provincetown and Other Poems.”
-- Karl Shapiro -
“Haul up the flag, you mourners, Not half-mast but all the way; The funeral is done and disbanded; The devil's had the final say.”
-- Karl Shapiro
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