Karl Shapiro quotes
-
“Poetry is innocent, not wise. It does not learn from experience, because each poetic experience is unique.”
-- Karl ShapiroSource : Karl Jay Shapiro (2004). “Creative Glut: Selected Essays of Karl Shapiro”, Ivan R. Dee Publisher
-
“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 ShapiroSource : Karl Shapiro (1964). “the Bourgeois Poet”
-
“Self-knowledge is a dangerous thing, tending to make man shallow or insane.”
-- Karl ShapiroSource : Karl Shapiro (1964). “the Bourgeois Poet”
-
-
“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 ShapiroSource : Karl Jay Shapiro, Richard O'Barry (1990). “Poet: An Autobiography in Three Parts”
-
“The proverbist knows nothing of the two sides of a question. He knows only the roundness of answers.”
-- Karl ShapiroSource : Karl Shapiro (1964). “the Bourgeois Poet”
-
“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 ShapiroSource : Karl Jay Shapiro, Richard O'Barry (1990). “Poet: An Autobiography in Three Parts”
-
“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 ShapiroSource : Karl Shapiro (1964). “the Bourgeois Poet”
-
-
“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 ShapiroSource : Karl Jay Shapiro, Stanley Kunitz, David Ignatow (1998). “The Wild Card: Selected Poems, Early and Late”, p.21, University of Illinois Press
-
“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 ShapiroSource : Karl Jay Shapiro (1953). “Poems, 1940-1953”, New York : Random House
-
-
“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 ShapiroSource : Karl Jay Shapiro, Stanley Kunitz, David Ignatow (1998). “The Wild Card: Selected Poems, Early and Late”, p.7, University of Illinois Press
-
“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 ShapiroSource : Karl Jay Shapiro, Stanley Kunitz, David Ignatow (1998). “The Wild Card: Selected Poems, Early and Late”, p.18, University of Illinois Press
-
“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 ShapiroSource : Harriet Monroe, Morton Dauwen Zabel, George Dillon, Karl Jay Shapiro, Henry Rago (1943). “Poetry”
-
-
“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
You may also like:
-
Allen Tate
Poet -
Anthony Hecht
Poet -
Carl Shapiro
Professor -
Conrad Aiken
Novelist -
David Ignatow
Poet -
Delmore Schwartz
Poet -
Ezra Pound
Poet -
John Berryman
Poet -
John Ciardi
Poet -
John Crowe Ransom
Critic -
John Frederick Nims
Poet -
Melvin B. Tolson
Poet -
Rainer Maria Rilke
Poet -
Randall Jarrell
Poet -
Richard Eberhart
Poet -
Robert Lowell
Poet -
Stanley Kunitz
Poet -
Thomas Jefferson
3rd U.S. President -
W. H. Auden
Poet -
Yvor Winters
Poet