The term 'the American Left' is as near to being meaningless or nonsensical as any term could really be in politics. It isn't really a force in politics anymore. And it would do well to ask itself why that is.

Politics I conceive to be nothing more than the science of the ordered progress of society along the lines of greatest usefulness and convenience to itself.

Reality only reveals itself when it is illuminated by a ray of poetry.

I will not leave a corner of my consciousness covered up but saturate myself with the strange and extraordinary new conditions of this life and it will all refine itself into poetry later on.

Poetry brings all possible experience to the same degree: a degree in the consciousness beyond which the consciousness itself cannot go.

The end of poetry is not to create a physical condition which shall give pleasure to the mind... The end of poetry is not an after-effect not a pleasurable memory of itself but an immediate constant and even unpleasant insistence upon itself.

I'm not really quiet or shy. Ask any of my friends! But I always ground my poetry in life itself. Poetry is an art of language though so I am always aware of every word's meaning or multiple meanings.

I believe that all poetry is formal in that it exists within limits limits that are either inherited by tradition or limits that language itself imposes.

I don't think rap really fits in to 'American Idol' in the sense that I believe rap is an art form in itself more akin to poetry more akin to drama if you will.

The fact of the matter is that the most unexpected and miraculous thing in my life was the arrival in it of poetry itself - as a vocation and an elevation almost.

The Language Poets are writing only about language itself. The Ashbery poets are writing only about poetry itself. That seems to me a kind of dead end.

I cannot speak for more than an hour exclusively about poetry. At that point life itself takes over again.

That is to say epic poetry has been invented many times and independently but as the needs which prompted the invention have been broadly similar so the invention itself has been.

In fact in lyric poetry truthfulness becomes recognizable as a ring of truth within the medium itself.

If poetry should address itself to the same needs and aspirations the same hopes and fears to which the Bible addresses itself it might rival it in distribution.

I grew up in this town my poetry was born between the hill and the river it took its voice from the rain and like the timber it steeped itself in the forests.

Poetry should be great and unobtrusive a thing which enters into one's soul and does not startle it or amaze it with itself but with its subject.

A poem is true if it hangs together. Information points to something else. A poem points to nothing but itself.

Chemistry itself knows altogether too well that - given the real fear that the scarcity of global resources and energy might threaten the unity of mankind - chemistry is in a position to make a contribution towards securing a true peace on earth.

As for the promotion of peace congresses we have had our meetings and assemblies but the promotion through them of the determined and effective will to peace displaying itself in action and policy remains to be achieved.

The Nobel Peace Prize has become hopelessly politicized. I think it cheapens the prize itself.

Civil strife is as much a greater evil than a concerted war effort as war itself is worse than peace.

The real discovery is the one which enables me to stop doing philosophy when I want to. The one that gives philosophy peace so that it is no longer tormented by questions which bring itself into question.

Political liberty the peace of a nation and science itself are gifts for which Fate demands a heavy tax in blood!