A Foreword to Krazy (1946)
Context: A humbly poetic, gently clownlike, supremely innocent, and illimitably affectionate creature (slightly resembling a child's drawing of a cat, but gifted with the secret grace and obvious clumsiness of a penguin on terra firma) who is never so happy as when egoist-mouse, thwarting altruist-dog, hits her in the head with a brick. Dog hates mouse and worships "cat", mouse despises "cat" and hates dog, "cat" hates no one and loves mouse.
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A Poet's Advice (1958)
Context: Almost anybody can learn to think or believe or know, but not a single human being can be taught to feel …
the moment you feel, you're nobody-but-yourself.
To be nobody-but-yourself — in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.
Variant: For whatever we lose (like a you or a me),
It's always our self we find in the sea.
Source: 100 Selected Poems
“Trust your heart if the seas catch fire, live by love though the stars walk backward.”
Variant: Trust your heart if the seas catch fire, live by love though the stars walk backwards.
“it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you”
92
95 poems (1958)
Variant: it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
“I would rather learn from one bird how to sing than to teach 10,000 stars how not to dance.”
Collected Poems (1938) New Poems 22
Variant: I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance.
Variant: I will take the sun in my mouth and leap into the ripe air.
Source: Poems, 1923-1954
65 - This poem was used by Eric Whitacre for an a capella SATB chorus titled "i thank you God".
XAIPE (1950)