Amy Lowell quotes
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“Poetry, far more than fiction, reveals the soul of humanity.”
-- Amy LowellSource : Amy Lowell (1931). “Tendencies in Modern American Poetry”, p.11, Ardent Media
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“Art is the desire of a man to express himself, to record the reactions of his personality to the world he lives in.”
-- Amy LowellSource : Amy Lowell (1931). “Tendencies in Modern American Poetry”, p.7, Ardent Media
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“All books are either dreams or swords, you can cut, or you can drug, with words.”
-- Amy LowellSource : "Sword Blades and Poppy Seeds" l. 291 (1914)
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“Sexual love is the most stupendous fact of the universe, and the most magical mystery our poor blind senses know.”
-- Amy LowellSource : Amy Lowell (1969). “John Keats”, Shoe String Pr Inc
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“When you came, you were like red wine and honey, and the taste of you burnt my mouth with its sweetness.”
-- Amy LowellSource : Amy Lowell (2004). “Selected Poems”
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“Hate is ravening vulture beaks descending on a place of skulls.”
-- Amy Lowell -
“Happiness, to some, elation; Is, to others, mere stagnation.”
-- Amy Lowell -
“A man must be sacrificed now and again to provide for the next generation of men.”
-- Amy Lowell -
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“Happiness: We rarely feel it. I would buy it, beg it, steal it, Pay in coins of dripping blood For this one transcendent good.”
-- Amy Lowell -
“Moon! Moon! I am prone before you. Pity me,and drench me in loneliness.”
-- Amy Lowell -
“Time! Joyless emblem of the greed of millions, robber of the best which earth can give.”
-- Amy Lowell -
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“I shall go Up and down In my gown. Gorgeously arrayed, Boned and stayed.”
-- Amy Lowell -
“Not a softness anywhere about me, Only whalebone and brocade.”
-- Amy Lowell -
“Underneath my stiffened gown Is the softness of a woman bathing in a marble basin”
-- Amy Lowell -
“In my stiff, brocaded gown. With my powdered hair and jeweled fan, I too am a rare Pattern.”
-- Amy Lowell -
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“Don’t ask a writer what he’s working on. It’s like asking someone with cancer on the progress of his disease.”
-- Amy Lowell -
“A black cat among roses, phlox, lilac-misted under a quarter moon, the sweet smells of heliotrope and night-scented stock. The garden is very still. It is dazed with moonlight, contented with perfume...”
-- Amy Lowell -
“You are ice and fire the touch of you burns my hands like snow.”
-- Amy Lowell -
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“Underneath my stiffened gown Is the softness of a woman bathing in a marble basin, A basin in the midst of hedges grown So thick, she cannot see her lover hiding, But she guesses he is near, And the sliding of the water Seems the stroking of a dear Hand upon her.”
-- Amy Lowell -
“Life is a stream On which we strew Petal by petal the flower of our heart; The end lost in dream, They float past our view, We only watch their glad, early start. Freighted with hope, Crimsoned with joy, We scatter the leaves of our opening rose; Their widening scope, Their distant employ, We never shall know. And the stream as it flows Sweeps them away, Each one is gone Ever beyond into infinite ways. We alone stay While years hurry on, The flower fared forth, though its fragrance still stays.”
-- Amy LowellSource : Amy Lowell (2009). “A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass”, p.9, ReadHowYouWant.com
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“Everything mortal has moments immortal”
-- Amy LowellSource : Amy Lowell (2009). “A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass”, p.16, ReadHowYouWant.com
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“I am tired, Beloved, of chafing my heart against the want of you; of squeezing it into little inkdrops, And posting it.”
-- Amy Lowell -
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“When I go away from you The world beats dead Like a slackened drum.”
-- Amy Lowell -
“Lilacs, False Blue, White, Purple, Colour of lilac, Your great puffs of flowers Are everywhere in this my New England ... Lilacs in dooryards Holding quiet conversation with an early moon; Lilacs watching a deserted house; ... Lilacs, wind-beaten, staggering under a lopsided shock of bloom, You are everywhere.”
-- Amy LowellSource : Amy Lowell, “Lilacs”
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“How much more beautiful is the moon, Slanting down the gauffered branches of a plum-tree; The moon Wavering across a bed of tulips; The moon, Still, Upon your face. You shine, Beloved, You and the moon. But which is the reflection?”
-- Amy Lowell -
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“So with the stretch of the white road before me, Shining snow crystals rainbowed by the sun, Fields that are white, stained with long, cool, blue shadows, Strong with the strength of my horse as we run. Joy in the touch of the wind and the sunlight! Joy! With the vigorous earth I am one.”
-- Amy LowellSource : Amy Lowell (2009). “A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass”, p.16, ReadHowYouWant.com
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“Oh! To be a flower Nodding in the sun, Bending, then upspringing As the breezes run.”
-- Amy Lowell -
“To understand Vers libre, one must abandon all desire to find in it the even rhythm of metrical feet. One must allow the lines to flow as they will when read aloud by an intelligent reader.”
-- Amy Lowell -
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“I must be mad, or very tired, When the curve of a blue bay beyond a railroad track Is shrill and sweet to me like the sudden springing of a tune, And the sight of a white church above thin trees in a city square Amazes my eyes as though it were the Parthenon.”
-- Amy Lowell -
“Only those of our poets who kept solidly to the Shakespearean tradition achieved any measure of success. But Keats was the last great exponent of that tradition, and we all know how thin, how lacking in charm, the copies of Keats have become.”
-- Amy Lowell -
“Great emotion always tends to become rhythmic, and out of that tendency the forms of art have been evolved. Art becomes artificial only when the forms take precedence over the emotion.”
-- Amy LowellSource : Amy Lowell (1931). “Tendencies in Modern American Poetry”, p.7, Ardent Media
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“Without poetry the soul and heart of man starves and dies.”
-- Amy LowellSource : Amy Lowell (1971). “Poetry and Poets: Essays”, p.3, Biblo & Tannen Publishers
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“Polyphonic prose is a kind of free verse, except that it is still freer. Polyphonic makes full use of cadence, rime, alliteration, assonance.”
-- Amy Lowell -
“Guarded within the old red wall's embrace, Marshalled like soldiers in gay company, The tulips stand arrayed. Here infantry Wheels out into the sunlight.”
-- Amy Lowell -
“Now you are come! You tremble like a star Poised where, behind earth's rim, the sun has set. Your voice has sung across my heart, but numb And mute, I have no tones to answer.”
-- Amy Lowell -
“Poetry is the most concentrated form of literature; it is the most emotionalized and powerful way in which thought can be presented ...”
-- Amy LowellSource : Amy Lowell (1931). “Tendencies in Modern American Poetry”, p.79, Ardent Media
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“I never deny poems when they come; whatever I am doing, whatever I am writing, I lay it aside and attend to the arriving poem.”
-- Amy Lowell -
“I do not suppose that anyone not a poet can realize the agony of creating a poem. Every nerve, even every muscle, seems strained to the breaking point. The poem will not be denied; to refuse to write it would be a greater torture. It tears its way out of the brain, splintering and breaking its passage, and leaves that organ in the state of a jelly-fish when the task is done.”
-- Amy Lowell -
“How hard, how desperately hard, is the way of the experimenter in art!”
-- Amy Lowell -
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“How loud clocks can tick when a room is empty, and one is alone!”
-- Amy LowellSource : Amy Lowell, Melissa Bradshaw (2002). “Selected Poems of Amy Lowell”, p.52, Rutgers University Press
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“My words are little jars For you to take and put upon a shelf. Their shapes are quaint and beautiful, And they have many pleasant colours and lustres To recommend them. Also the scent from them fills the room With sweetness of flowers and crushed grasses.”
-- Amy LowellSource : Amy Lowell (2009). “Sword Blades and Poppy Seed”, p.57, ReadHowYouWant.com
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“Poets are always the advance guard of literature; the advance guard of life. It is for this reason that their recognition comes so slowly.”
-- Amy LowellSource : Amy Lowell (1931). “Tendencies in Modern American Poetry”, p.11, Ardent Media
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“Oh! To be a butterfly Still, upon a flower, Winking with its painted wings, Happy in the hour.”
-- Amy LowellSource : Amy Lowell (2009). “A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass”, p.19, ReadHowYouWant.com
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“I should like to bring a case to trial: Prosperity versus Beauty, Cash registers teetering in a balance against the comfort of the soul.”
-- Amy Lowell -
“This is America, This vast, confused beauty, This staring, restless speed of loveliness, Mighty, overwhelming, crude, of all forms, Making grandeur out of profusion, Afraid of no incongruities, Sublime in its audacity, Bizarre breaker of moulds.”
-- Amy LowellSource : Amy Lowell (1955). “Complete poetical works: With an introd. by Louis Untermeyer”
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“Love is a game-yes? I think it is a drowning.”
-- Amy Lowell -
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“To-night when the full-bellied moon swallows the stars. Grant that I know.”
-- Amy Lowell -
“Witches are moon-birds, Witches are the women of the false, beautiful moon.”
-- Amy Lowell -
“Can you see through the night, woman, that you stare so upon it? Man, what sparks do your eyes follow in the smouldering darkness?”
-- Amy Lowell -
“Happiness, to some, is elation; to others it is mere stagnation.”
-- Amy Lowell -
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“I ask but one thing of you, only one, That always you will be my dream of you; That never shall I wake to find untrue All this I have believed and rested on, Forever vanished, like a vision gone Out into the night. Alas, how few There are who strike in us a chord we knew Existed, but so seldom heard its tone We tremble at the half-forgotten sound. The world is full of rude awakenings And heaven-born castles shattered to the ground, Yet still our human longing vainly clings To a belief in beauty through all wrongs. O stay your hand, and leave my heart its songs!”
-- Amy Lowell -
“This is war: Boys flung into a breach Like shoveled earth; And old men, Broken, Driving rapidly before crowds of people In a glitter of silly decorations. Behind the boys And the old men, Life weeps, And shreds her garments To the blowing winds.”
-- Amy Lowell -
“On the neck of the young man sparkles no gem so gracious as enterprise. Youth condemns; maturity condones.”
-- Amy Lowell -
“Brighter than fireflies upon the Uji River are your words in the dark, Beloved.”
-- Amy Lowell -
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“When trying to explain anything, I usually find that the Bible, that great collection of magnificent and varied poetry, has said it before in the best possible way.”
-- Amy Lowell -
“All recurring joy is pain refined.”
-- Amy LowellSource : Amy Lowell (2009). “A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass”, p.71, ReadHowYouWant.com
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“The stigma of oddness is the price a myopic world always exacts of genius.”
-- Amy LowellSource : Amy Lowell (1955). “Complete poetical works: With an introd. by Louis Untermeyer”
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“Freighted with hope, Crimsoned with joy, We scatter the leaves of our opening rose.”
-- Amy Lowell -
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“My heart is tuned to sorrow, and the strings Vibrate most readily to minor chords, Searching and sad; my mind is stuffed with words Which voice the passion and the ache of things: Illusions beating with their baffled wings Against the walls of circumstance.”
-- Amy Lowell -
“Fifteen millions of soldiers with popguns and horses All bent upon killing, because their "of courses" Are not quite the same.”
-- Amy Lowell -
“Life is a stream On which we strew Petal by petal the flower of our heart.”
-- Amy Lowell -
“Art is like politics. Any theory carried too far ends in sterility, and freshness is only gained by following some other line.”
-- Amy LowellSource : Amy Lowell (1931). “Tendencies in Modern American Poetry”, p.6, Ardent Media
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“If what we worship fail us, still the fire burns on, and it is much to have believed.”
-- Amy Lowell
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