Karl Shapiro Quotes

#1. Poets of course are even more unpredictable than other writers, overwhelmed as they are by the moment they inhabit and finding it difficult to connect yesterday with tomorrow.

Karl Shapiro

#2. A man's house is his stage. Others walk on to play their bit parts. Now and again a soliloquy, a birth, an adultery.

Karl Shapiro

#3. In the tight belly of the dead, Burrow with hungry head, And inlay maggots like a jewel.

Karl Shapiro

#4. Poetry is innocent, not wise. It does not learn from experience, because each poetic experience is unique.

Karl Shapiro

#5. Poetry is not a way of saying things; it's a way of seeing things.

Karl Shapiro

#6. Lastly, his tomb shall list and founder in the troughs of grass. And none shall speak his name.

Karl Shapiro

#7. But with exquisite breathing you smile, with satisfaction of love, And I touch you again as you tick in the silence and settle in sleep.

Karl Shapiro

#8. Laughter and grief join hands. Always the heart Clumps in the breast with heavy stride; The face grows lined and wrinkled like a chart, The eyes bloodshot with tears and tide. Let the wind blow, for many a man shall die.

Karl Shapiro

#9. Keelhaul the poets in the vestry chairs.

Karl Shapiro

#10. The proverbist knows nothing of the two sides of a question. He knows only the roundness of answers.

Karl Shapiro

#11. Lawyers love paper. They eat, sleep and dream paper. They turn paper into gold, and their files are colorful and their language neoclassical and calli-graphically bewigged.

Karl Shapiro

#12. My soul is now her day, my day her night, So I lie down, and so I rise.

Karl Shapiro

#13. The body, what is it, Father, but a sign To love the force that grows us, to give back What in Thy palm is senselessness and mud?

Karl Shapiro

#14. Haul up the flag, you mourners, Not half-mast but all the way; The funeral is done and disbanded; The devil's had the final say.

Karl Shapiro

#15. The modern essay has regained a good deal of its literary status in our time, much to the credit of Joseph Epstein.

Karl Shapiro

#16. The doctor punched my vein, the captain called me Cain, upon my belly sat the sow of fear.

Karl Shapiro

#17. The good poet sticks to his real loves, those within the realm of possibility. He never tries to hold hands with God or the human race.

Karl Shapiro

#18. How something important happens is the business of historians and newspapers, the effect it has is the business of philosophers and writers and especially poets.

Karl Shapiro

#19. Leo Connellan has retained his soul and voice in Provincetown and Other Poems.

Karl Shapiro

#20. Every war is its own excuse. That's why they're all surrounded with ideals. That's why they're all crusades.

Karl Shapiro

#21. To make the child in your own image is a capital crime, for your image is not worth repeating. The child knows this and you know it. Consequently you hate each other.

Karl Shapiro

#22. Self-knowledge is a dangerous thing, tending to make man shallow or insane.

Karl Shapiro

#23. Already old, the question Who shall die? Becomes unspoken Who is innocent?

Karl Shapiro