Poetry Quote by Louise Glück — Inspiring Words on Life, Love & Wisdom

“It is true that there is not enough beauty in the world.”

“We look at the world once, in childhood.”

“Look at us, she said. We are all of us in this room”

“Birth, not death, is the hard loss.”

“You die when your spirit dies.”

“Of two sisters”

“Out there somewhere there is a love who will never dream of calling you too much. Who speaks, like you, in poetry and candlewax and stardust. Who runs outside on stormy nights to howl at the moon. Who collects bones and sings incantation and talks to the ancestors. And that lover, when you find him or her, will see you and know you – just as you are and just as you should be.”

“She was broken from moment to moment, watching her world collide she felt lost inside herself. She fell apart for a passion that flamed beneath her. She waited and died a hundred times, it dripped from her pores. The moment she let go, she soared over the stillness like the star she was born to be.”

“Nobody reads poetry, we are told at every inopportune moment. I read poetry. I am somebody. I am the people, too. It can be allowed that an industrious quantity of contemporary American poetry is consciously written for a hermetic constituency; the bulk is written for the bourgeoisie, leaving a lean cut for labor. Only the hermetically aimed has a snowball's chance in hell of reaching its intended ears. One proceeds from this realization. A staggering figure of vibrant, intelligent people can and do live without poetry, especially without the poetry of their time. This figure includes the unemployed, the rank and file, the union brass, banker, scientist, lawyer, doctor, architect, pilot, and priest. It also includes most academics, most of the faculty of the humanities, most allegedly literary editors and most allegedly literary critics. They do so--go forward in their lives, toward their great reward, in an engulfing absence of poetry--without being perceived or perceiving themselves as hobbled or deficient in any significant way. It is nearly true, though I am often reminded of a Transtromer broadside I saw in a crummy office building in San Francisco:”