auria “Hussein” cortes

A Puerto Rican who is born in New York is called a Nuyorican. According to Wiki, Nuyorican itself dates at least from 1975, the date of the first public sessions of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe.

The Nuyorican Poets Cafe was a place I freqented in my my teens and twenties. The Cafe is where poets gather and slam. Though I never had the courage to perform, I enjoyed the ambiance and watching the performances of others.

Since April is poetry month, I decided to devote this week’s TT to poetry quotes.

• Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash. ~Leonard Cohen
• Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary. ~Kahlil Gibran
• Ink runs from the corners of my mouth
  There is no happiness like mine.
  I have been eating poetry.
  ~Mark Strand, “Eating Poetry,” Reasons for Moving, 1968
• There’s no money in poetry, but then there’s no poetry in money, either. ~Robert Graves, 1962 interview on BBC-TV, based on a very similar statement he overheard around 1955
• Poetry is what gets lost in translation. ~Robert Frost
• Imaginary gardens with real toads in them. ~Marianne Moore’s definition of poetry, “Poetry,” Collected Poems, 1951
• A poem is never finished, only abandoned. ~Paul Valéry
• He who draws noble delights from sentiments of poetry is a true poet, though he has never written a line in all his life. ~George Sand, 1851
• Always be a poet, even in prose. ~Charles Baudelaire, “My Heart Laid Bare,” Intimate Journals, 1864
• Poets are soldiers that liberate words from the steadfast possession of definition. ~Eli Khamarov, The Shadow Zone
• Poetry is the journal of the sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air. Poetry is a search for syllables to shoot at the barriers of the unknown and the unknowable. Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away. ~Carl Sandburg, Poetry Considered
• Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted. ~Percy Shelley, A Defence of Poetry, 1821
• Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history. ~Plato, Ion

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