32 quotes
We now give more serious weight to the words of a country's poets than to the words of its politicians — though we know the latter may interfere more drastically with our lives.
Poetry International Programme note (1967)
However rootedly national it may be, poetry is less and less the prisoner of its own language.
Poetry International Programme note (1967)
The idea of global unity is not new, but the absolute necessity of it has only just arrived, like a sudden radical alteration of the sun, and we shall have to adapt or disappear.
Poetry International Programme note (1967)
The jaws' hooked clamp and fangs
Not to be changed at this date;
A life subdued to its instrument.
Lupercal (1960)
The deeps are cold:
In that darkness camaraderie does not hold:
Nothing touches but, clutching, devours.
Lupercal (1960)
The brassy wood-pigeons
Bubble their colourful voices, and the sun
Rises upon a world well-tried and old.
Wodwo (1967)
Pike, three inches long, perfect
Pike in all parts, green tigering the gold.
Killers from the egg: the malevolent aged grin.
Lupercal (1960)
A machine with only two products:
Dog-shit and dead foxes.
The gash in its throat was shocking, but not pathetic.
Lupercal (1960)
The world rolls under the long thrust of his heel.
Over the cage floor the horizons come.
The Hawk in the Rain (1957)
But who is stronger than death?
Me, evidently.
Crow (1970)
Poems get to the point where they are stronger than you are. They come up from some other depth and they find a place on the page.
Daylong this tomcat lies stretched flat
As an old rough mat, no mouth and no eyes,
Continual wars and wives are what
Have tattered his ears and battered his head.
Esther's Tomcat (1960)
With a sudden sharp hot stink of fox,
It enters the dark hole of the head.
The window is starless still; the clock ticks,
The page is printed.
The Hawk in the Rain (1957)
Nobody knew the Iron Man had fallen.
Night passed.
The Iron Man (1968)
From the age of about eight or nine I read just about every comic book available in England.
I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed.
Inaction, no falsifying dream
Between my hooked head and hooked feet:
Or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat.
Lupercal (1960)
He swayed in the strong wind that pressed against his back. He swayed forward, on the brink of the high cliff. And his right foot, his enormous iron right foot, lifted-up, out, into space, and the Iron Man stepped forward, off the cliff, into nothingness.
The Iron Man (1968)
Nothing has changed since I began.
My eye has permitted no change.
I am going to keep things like this.
Lupercal (1960)
No, until the revelation’s actually published, the poet feels no release.