Share this page: I will teach you my townspeople how to perform a funeral for you to have it over a troop of artists -- unless one should scour the world -- you have the ground sense necessary. -- 'Tract' in: Al Que Quiere! (1917) Covertly the hands of a great clock go round and round! Were they to move quickly and at once the whole secret would be out and the shuffling of all ants be doe forever -- 'Overture to a Dance of Locomotives' in: Sour Grapes (1921) One by one the objects are defined -- It quickens clarity, outline of leaf But now the stark dignity of entrance--Still, the profound change has come upon them: rooted, they grip down and begin to awaken. -- 'Spring and All' in: Spring and All (1923) so much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens. -- ‘The Red Wheelbarrow’ in: Spring and All (1923) The crowd at the ball game is moved uniformly by a spirit of uselessness which delights them. -- 'At the Ball Game' in: Spring and All (1923) Oh, oh, oh! she cried as the ambulance men lifted her to the stretcher-- Is this what you call making me comfortable? -- 'The Last Words of my English Grandmother' in: Spring and All (1923) What are all those fuzzy-looking things out there? Trees? Well I'm tired of them and rolled her head away. -- 'The Last Words of my English Grandmother' in: Spring and All (1923) I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox and which you were probably saving for breakfast Forgive me they were delicious so sweet and so cold -- "This Is Just to Say" (1934) The War is the first and only thing in the world today. The arts generally are not, nor is this writing a diversion from that for relief, a turning away. It is the war or part of it, merely a different sector of the field. -- The Wedge (1944), introduction Is it any better in Heaven, my friend Ford, Than you found it in Provence? -- ' To Ford Maddox Ford in Heaven' in: The Wedge (1944) Through metaphor to reconcile the people and the stones. Compose. (No ideas but in things.) Invent! -- 'A Sort of Song' in: The Wedge (1944) For the beginning is assuredly the end--since we know nothing, pure and simple, beyond our own complexities. -- Paterson (1946), bk. 1, preface Minds like beds always made up, (more stony than a shore) unwilling or unable. -- Paterson (1946), bk. 1, preface --Say it, no ideas but in things-- nothing but the blank faces of the houses and cylindrical trees bent, forked by preconception and accident-- split, furrowed, creased, mottled, stained-- secret--into the body of the light! -- Paterson (1946), bk. 1 Divorce is the sign of knowledge in our time. -- Paterson (1946), bk. 1, 'The Delineaments of the Giants', 1 Without invention nothing is well spaced. -- Paterson (1946), bk. 2, 'Sunday in the Park', 1 Unless there is a new mind there cannot be a new line, the old will go on repeating itself with recurring deadliness: -- Paterson (1946), bk. 2, 'Sunday in the Park', 1 Beyond the gap where the river plunges into the narrow gorge, unseen --and the imagination soars, as a voice beckons, a thundrous voice, endless --as sleep, the voice that has ineluctably called them-- that unmoving roar! -- Paterson (1946), bk. 2, 'Sunday in the Park', 1 Though he is approaching death he is possessed by many poems. -- Paterson (1958), bk. 5 Anything is good material for poetry. Anything. -- Paterson (1958), bk. 5 My heart rouses thinking to bring you news of something that concerns you and concerns many men. Look at what passes for the new. You will not find it there but in despised poems. It is difficult to get the news from poems yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there. -- 'Asphodel, That Greeny Flower' in: Journey to Love (1950) Share this page:

The selection of the above quotes and the writing of the accompanying notes was performed by the author David Paul Wagner. About Us • Contact Us • Privacy • Terms of Use © 2005-23 Wide World of Quotes. All Rights Reserved.