Catherynne M. Valente Quotes

If the object of poetry is, to make men, then poetry is the heir of prophecy.

And your very flesh shall be a great poem.

The natural world is often bleak, but the language devoted to it is as careful as needlepoint and prophetic as well.

We like to think we live in daylight, but half the world is always dark, and fantasy, like poetry, speaks the language of the night.

How poetic you are," she said. "I've a notion that poetry is the highest form of self-deception.

Among all the valuable things of this world, the word is the most precious. For in the word one can find a light which gems and jewels do not possess; a word may contain so much life that it can heal the wounds of the heart. Therefore, poetry in which the soul is expressed is as living as a human being. The greatest reward that God bestows on man is eloquence and poetry. This is not an exaggeration, for it is the gift of the poet that culminates, in time, with the gift of prophecy.

Musings The little poets sing of little things: Hope, cheer, and faith, small queens and puppet kings; Lovers who kissed and then were made as one, And modest flowers waving in the sun. The mighty poets write in blood and tears And agony that, flame-like, bites and sears. They reach their mad blind hands into the night, To plumb abysses dead to human sight; To drag from gulfs where lunacy lies curled, Mad, monstrous nightmare shapes to blast the world. [click on the thumbnail by Jack "King" Kirby]

Too often students are being taught to read as if literature were some kind of ethics class or civics class—or worse, some kind of self-help manual. In fact, the important thing is the way the writer uses the language.

Poems are always interested in what Ivan Illich called 'shadow work,' not least because that is no small part of their own way of working.

Beware what you speak,' said the Merlin very softly, 'for indeed the words we speak make shadows of what is to come, and by speaking them we bring them to pass, my king.

All was shattered, and all but memory lost, and one memory above all others, of him who brought the Shadow and the Breaking of the World. And him they named Dragon.

I don't know why, but there's always the part of you, the part that hides in the shadows protecting the self-destruct button, that doesn't ever want to leave the dark behind.

That's the main business of the poem!-to see if you can't make up a language that sets all your selves talking at once-all of them being fair to each other.

Language is the machine of the poet.

Poetry had breathed over and sanctified the land.

We do inherently know that poetry is about the way we speak. It's about where we pause, where we drop our words in the middle of a sentence. It's about the rhythm and the cadence of the way we speak. It's about putting that down at the end of the day.

The beauty of poetry is that the creation transcends the poet.

For the first rate poet, nothing short of a Queen or a Chimera is adequate for the powers of his praise.

Poetry is probably the one field of writing in which it is a mistake to try to psych out editors. In fact, specific marketing advice can sometimes harm the novice poet by enticing him to pursue fashions. The poet's best hope is to sound like nobody else, The finest, most enduring poetry constructs a marketplace of its own.

For a long time now, every meeting with another human being has been the reverberations after even the simplest conversation. But the deep collision is and has been with my unregenerate, tormenting and tormented self...I am unable to become what I see. I feel like an inadequate machine, a machine that breaks down at crucial moments, grinds to a dreadful halt, "won't go".

Eroticism is one of the basic means of self-knowledge, as indispensable as poetry.

You speak to me in riddles, you speak to me in rhymes, my body aches to breathe your breath, your word keeps me alive.

The poet is a creator, not an iconoclast, and never will tamely endeavor to say in prose what can only be expressed in song.