Quotes From "The Collected Poems" By Sara Teasdale

Stephen kissed me in the spring, Robin in the fall, But Colin only looked at me And never kissed at all. Stephen’s kiss was lost in jest, Robin’s lost in play, But the kiss in Colin’s eyes Haunts me night and day. Sara Teasdale

I didn’t want any flowers, I only wanted To lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty. How free it is, you have no idea how free–– The peacefulness is so big it dazes you, And it asks nothing, a name tag, a few trinkets. It is what the dead close on, finally; I imagine them Shutting their mouths on it, like a Communion tablet. Sylvia Plath

I?I walk alone; The midnight street Spins itself from under my feet; My eyes shut These dreaming houses all snuff out; Through a whim of mine Over gables the moon's celestial onion Hangs high. I Make houses shrink And trees diminish By going far; my look's leash Dangles the puppet-people Who, unaware how they dwindle, Laugh, kiss, get drunk, Nor guess that if I choose to blink They die. I When in good humour, Give grass its green Blazon sky blue, and endow the sun With gold; Yet, in my wintriest moods, I hold Absolute power To boycott color and forbid any flower To be. I Know you appear Vivid at my side, Denying you sprang out of my head, Claiming you feel Love fiery enough to prove flesh real, Though it's quite clear All your beauty, all your wit, is a gift, my dear, From me." Soliloquy of the Solipsist", 1956. Sylvia Plath

I Am VerticalBut I would rather be horizontal. I am not a tree with my root in the soil Sucking up minerals and motherly love So that each March I may gleam into leaf, Nor am I the beauty of a garden bed Attracting my share of Ahs and spectacularly painted, Unknowing I must soon unpetal. Compared with me, a tree is immortal And a flower-head not tall, but more startling, And I want the one's longevity and the other's daring. Tonight, in the infinitesimal light of the stars, The trees and flowers have been strewing their cool odors. I walk among them, but none of them are noticing. Sometimes I think that when I am sleeping I must most perfectly resemble them-- Thoughts gone dim. It is more natural to me, lying down. Then the sky and I are in open conversation, And I shall be useful when I lie down finally: The the trees may touch me for once, and the flowers have time for me." I Am Vertical", 28 March 1961 . Sylvia Plath

In my darkest night, when the moon was coveredand I roamed through wreckage, a nimbus-clouded voicedirected me:“ Live in the layers, not on the litter.” Though I lack the artto decipher it, no doubt the next chapterin my book of transformationsis already written. I am not done with my changes. Stanley Kunitz

Although, I admit, I desire, Occasionally, some backtalk From the mute sky, I can't honestly complain: A certain minor light may still Lean incandescent Out of kitchen table or chair As if a celestial burning took Possession of the most obtuse objects now and then -- Sylvia Plath

It matters, because everything we say Of the past is description without place, a cast Of the imagination, made in sound; And because what we say of the future must portend, Be alive with its own seemings, seeming to be Like rubies reddened by rubies reddening. Wallace Stevens

Spend the glittering moonlight there Pursuing down the soundless deep Limbs that gleam and shadowy hair, Or floating lazy, half-asleep. Dive and double and follow after, Snare in flowers, and kiss, and call, With lips that fade, and human laughter And faces individual, Well this side of Paradise! .. .There's little comfort in the wise. Rupert Brooke

Be the voice of night and Florida in my ear. Use dusky words and dusky images. Darken your speech. Speak, even, as if I did not hear you speaking, But spoke for you perfectly in my thoughts, Conceiving words, As the night conceives the sea-sounds in silence, And out of their droning sibilants makes A serenade. Wallace Stevens

He heard her low accord, Half prayer and half ditty, And He felt a subtle quiver, That was not heavenly love, Or pity. This is not writ In any book. Wallace Stevens

The villages slept as the capable man went down, Time swished on the village clocks and dreams were alive, The enormous gongs gave edges to their sounds, As the rider, no chevalere and poorly dressed, Impatient of the bells and midnight forms, Rode over the picket docks, rode down the road, And, capable, created in his mind, Eventual victor, out of the martyr's bones, The ultimate elegance: the imagined land. Wallace Stevens

If there must be a god in the house, must be, Saying things in the rooms and on the stair, Let him move as the sunlight moves on the floor, Or moonlight, silently, as Plato's ghost Or Aristotle's skeleton. Let him hang out His stars on the wall. He must dwell quietly. Wallace Stevens

AESTHETICS OF INTEGRITYFor every star in the sky Someone is holding his ground. Kenneth Koch

Consider the odd morphology of regret. Wallace Stevens

Most Like an Arch This MarriageMost like an arch–an entrance which upholds and shores the stone-crush up the air like lace. Mass made idea, and idea held in place. A lock in time. Inside half-heaven unfolds. Most like an arch–two weaknesses that lean into a strength. Two fallings become firm. Two joined abeyances become a term naming the fact that teaches fact to mean. Not quite that? Not much less. World as it is, what’s strong and separate falters. All I do at piling stone on stone apart from you is roofless around nothing. Till we kiss I am no more than upright and unset. It is by falling in and in we makethe all-bearing point, for one another’s sake, in faultless failing, raised by our own weight. John Ciardi

The law of chaos is the law of ideas, Of improvisations and seasons of belief. Ideas are men. The mass of meaning and The mass of men are one. Chaos is not The mass of meaning. It is three or four Ideas, or, say, five men or, possibly, six. In the end, these philosophic assassins pull Revolvers and shoot each other. One remains. The mass of meaning becomes composed again. Wallace Stevens

We have all been expelled from the Garden, but the ones who suffer most in exile are those who are still permitted to dream of perfection. Stanley Kunitz

I am your opus. Sylvia Plath

The death of one god is the death of all. Wallace Stevens

Wind warns November’s done with. The blown leaves make bat-shapes, Web-winged and furious. Sylvia Plath