"All our favorite poets are dead"

[quotemadness]

“I like you; your eyes are full of language.”

— Anne Sexton

[oldfilmsflicker]

“The Black Art” by Anne Sexton for National Poetry Month 

[violentwavesofemotion-deactivat]

“If you were here, if you were only here—”

— Sara Teasdale, from Stars Tonight: Poems; “Sleepless,”

[boohooray]

[bitter1stuff]

When poets were POETS.

[inthemarginalized]

I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood.  - Audre Lorde (February 18, 1934- November 17, 1992)

She was a Caribbean-American writer, poet and activist. In her own words, Lorde was a “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet”. In an African naming ceremony before her death, she took the name Gambda Adisa, which means “Warrior: She Who Makes Her Meaning Known”.

[violentwavesofemotion-deactivat]

Edna St. Vincent Millay’s house at Steepletop photographed by Philip Kamrass and featured in The Times Union c. 2011: 

“Nobody was allowed in book-lined private library, not even her husband, where she made her intentions clear by hanging a handmade sign from the ceiling that read, “SILENCE.” […] There was hell to pay if a member of the staff or a guest dared to interrupt Millay when she was shut away in her writing shed amid a grove of pine trees for two or three hours each afternoon, with the conclusion of her writing session marked by the trill of a wind-up alarm clock kept on a desk there.”

“Edna St. Vincent Millay tumbled down the farmhouse’s steep, narrow stairs and broke her neck on the first-floor landing in 1950.”

[nobrashfestivity]

Anne Sexton

[kushandwisdom]

I used to say I’d know you anywhere, but it’s getting harder.

Margaret Atwood (via thelovenotebook)

[existential-celestial]

It is quaint how much I miss you. It is archaic.

Ednat St. Vincent Millay, Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay (via existential-celestial)

[rasengnn]

i will be the gladdest thing under the sun! i will touch a hundred flowers and not pick one. – edna st vincent millay

[apoemaday]

A Woman Speaks

by Audre Lorde

Moon marked and touched by sun my magic is unwritten but when the sea turns back it will leave my shape behind. I seek no favor untouched by blood unrelenting as the curse of love permanent as my errors or my pride I do not mix love with pity nor hate with scorn and if you would know me look into the entrails of Uranus where the restless oceans pound. I do not dwell within my birth nor my divinities who am ageless and half-grown and still seeking my sisters witches in Dahomey wear me inside their coiled cloths as our mother did mourning. I have been woman for a long time beware my smile I am treacherous with old magic and the noon’s new fury with all your wide futures promised I am woman and not white.

[smakkabagms]

Mother’s death came in the spotlight and mother slamming the door when I need her and you yesterday, you at loss, grown white, saying what lovers say.

Anne Sexton (via smakka--bagms)

[childofzami]

“My political obligations? I am a Black woman … in world that defines human as white and male for starters. Everything I do including survival is political.” 

- Audre Lorde

[childofzami]

“My political obligations? I am a Black woman … in world that defines human as white and male for starters. Everything I do including survival is political.” 

- Audre Lorde

[adrasteiax]

I will be black light as you lie against me I will be heavy as August over your hair

Audre Lorde, from Meet in “The Collected Poems Of Audre Lorde” (via adrasteiax)

[a-quiet-green-agreement]

–Anne Sexton

[thursdays-at-the-coffeeshop]

August rain: the best of the summer gone, and the new fall not yet born. The odd uneven time.

Sylvia Plath (via thursdays-at-the-coffeeshop)