The kind of poem I produced in those days was hardly anything more than a sign I made of being alive, of passing or having passed, or hoping to pass, through certain intense human emotions. It was a...

As if this great outburst of anger had purged all my ills, killed all my hopes, I looked up at the mass of signs and stars in the night sky and laid myself open for the first time to the benign...

{The unicorn} sighed and plodded on, both amused and disappointed. It serves you right, she told herself. You know better than to expect a butterfly to know your name. All they know are songs and...

I lean to you, numb as a fossil. Tell me I'm here.

Conflicting stories continue to circulate concerning the death of the President. A second White House announcement has now called attention to the President's schedule for the day, pointing out that...

Its snaky acids kiss.It petrifies the will. These are the isolate, slow faults That kill, that kill, that kill.

How can I tell Bob that my happiness streams from having wrenched a piece out of my life, a piece of hurt and beauty, and transformed it to typewritten words on paper? How can he know I am justifying...

The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right,White as a knuckle and terribly upset.It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quietWith the O-gape of complete despair. I live here.

But writing poems and letters doesn't seem to do much good.

O love, how did you get here?--Nick and the Candlestick

The blood jet is poetryThere is no stopping it.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bedAnd sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.{I think I made you up inside my head.}

Inebriate of Air - am I -And Debauchee of Dew -Reeling - thro endless summer days -From Inns of Molten Blue

I held a jewel in my fingersAnd went to sleep.The day was warm, and winds were prosy;I said: "'T will keep."I woke and chid my honest fingers,-The gem was gone;And now an amethyst remembranceIs all I...

Wild Nights – Wild Nights!...

I felt a Cleaving in my Mind-As if my Brain had split-I tried to match it-Seam by Seam-But could not make it fit.

Hope is the thing with feathersThat perches in the soul,And sings the tune without the words,And never stops at all,And sweetest in the gale is heard;And sore must be the stormThat could abash the...

One need not be a chamber to be haunted.

I'm nobody! Who are you? Are you nobody, too? Then there 's a pair of us-don't tell! They 'd banish us, you know. How dreary to be somebody! How public, like a frog To tell your name the livelong day...

Becauseyou rubbed my shoulderlast nighta poe

You are a poem--and that is to be the best part of a poet--what makes up thepoet's consciousness in his best moods.

Every poet begins {however 'unconsciously'} by rebelling more strongly against the fear of death than all other men and women do.

Happiness. It comes o

there isn't enough of anythingas long as we live. But at intervalsa sweetness appears and, given a chanceprevails.

And did you get whatyou wanted from this life, even so?I did.And what did you want?To call myself beloved, to feel myselfbeloved on the earth.

Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain.

If poets often commit suicide, it is not because their poems are bad but because they are good. Whoever heard of a bad poet committing suicide? The reader is only a little better off. The exhilaration...

When I reached the vestibule of my apartment building, the campus police closed in on me. I heard Professor Edelstein shout, it's okay, he's a poet. Matter of fact, the best black ... the best poet...

Why are you bad hour, Do you mix with anxiety unnecessary? You are - so you have to pass. You will pass - so it's beautiful

After each war, someone has to clean up.