Modern Poetry Quotes

“My mind was empty as a ballroom and I was not compelled to dance.”
― Diane Seuss, Modern Poetry: Poems

“What can memory be in these terrible times?
Only instruction. Not a dwelling.”
― Diane Seuss, Modern Poetry: Poems

“Ants know earth. Dragonflies know air. A cobbled mind is not fatal. You have to be willing to self-educate at a moment’s notice, and to be caught in your ignorance by people who will use it against you. You will mispronounce words in front of a crowd. It cannot be avoided. But your poems, with all of their deficiencies, products of lifelong observation and asymmetric knowledge, will be your own. Built on the edge of tradition, they will rarely be anthologized.”
― Diane Seuss, Modern Poetry: Poems

“A cobbled mind is not fatal. You have to be willing to self-educate at a moment’s notice, and to be caught in your ignorance by people who will use it against you. You will mispronounce words in front of a crowd. It cannot be avoided. But your poems, with all of their deficiencies, will be your own.”
― Diane Seuss, Modern Poetry: Poems

“Your dreams are just dreams, and all dreams go up in smoke.”
― Diane Seuss, Modern Poetry: Poems

“My stylist, gravity. Memory a tree so loaded with fruit and birds the tips of the branches rake the ground. By lithe I do not mean in body, do I? Do I mean in soul? To be one of those green-eyed ones others refer to as aquamarine. Empty of ancestors. Face clean of lipstick smears and other gestures of artifice.”
― Diane Seuss, Modern Poetry: Poems