5 Quotes & Sayings By Louis Simpson

Louis Simpson was the most celebrated poet of the Harlem Renaissance. His work has been hailed by many as poetry's greatest achievement since Walt Whitman. Born in Jamaica, Queens in 1899, he was named for his father, a Jamaican immigrant. Simpson moved to New York at age 15 and soon became a staff writer at the Amsterdam News, the most popular African American newspaper in the country Read more

He later joined the staff of the Chicago Defender, where he served as editor-in-chief. He also served as Poet Laureate of Chicago's Poetry Center, Poet Laureate of Illinois, and Poet Laureate of Illinois State University.

1
These wars have been so great, they are forgotten Like the Egyptian dynasts. My confrere In whose thick boots I stood, were you amazed To wander through my brain four decades later As I have wandered in a dream through yours? The violence of waking life disrupts The order of our death. Strange dreams occur, For dreams are licensed as they never were. Louis Simpson
The Open Road goes to the used-car lot.
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The Open Road goes to the used-car lot. Louis Simpson
3
Do not write. I am sad, and want my light put out. Summers in your absence are as dark as a room. I have closed my arms again. They must do without. To knock at my heart is like knocking at a tomb. Do not write! Do not write. Let us learn to die, as best we may. Did I love you? Ask God. Ask yourself. Do you know? To hear that you love me, when you are far away, Is like hearing from heaven and never to go. Do not write! Do not write. I fear you. I fear to remember, For memory holds the voice I have often heard. To the one who cannot drink, do not show water, The beloved one's picture in the handwritten word. Do not write! Do not write those gentle words that I dare not see, It seems that your voice is spreading them on my heart, Across your smile, on fire, they appear to me, It seems that a kiss is printing them on my heart. Do not write! . Louis Simpson
4
The aim of military training is not just to prepare men for battle but to make them long for it. Louis Simpson