Joyce Kilmer: Poet

Joyce Kilmer was American poet, editor, literary critic, soldier. Explore interesting quotes on poet.
Joyce Kilmer: 84   quotes 3   likes

“Madame, a poor poet, one of your singing servants yet on earth,
Has asked me to say that at this moment he is especially grateful to you
For wearing a blue gown.”

Joyce Kilmer

Main Street and Other Poems (1917), A Blue Valentine
Context: But, of your courtesy, Monsignore,
Do me this favour:
When you this morning make your way
To the Ivory Throne that bursts into bloom with roses
because of her who sits upon it,
When you come to pay your devoir to Our Lady,
I beg you, say to her:
"Madame, a poor poet, one of your singing servants yet on earth,
Has asked me to say that at this moment he is especially grateful to you
For wearing a blue gown."

Singing

“Is Freedom only a Will-o'-the-wisp
To cheat a poet's eye?
Be it phantom or fact, it's a noble cause
In which to sing and to die!”

Joyce Kilmer

Main Street and Other Poems (1917), Apology
Context: Lord Byron and Shelley and Plunkett,
McDonough and Hunt and Pearse
See now why their hatred of tyrants
Was so insistently fierce.
Is Freedom only a Will-o'-the-wisp
To cheat a poet's eye?
Be it phantom or fact, it's a noble cause
In which to sing and to die!

Freedom , Singing , Cheating

“The title of poet's a noble thing, worth living and dying for,
Though all the devils on earth and in Hell spit at me their disdain.
It is stern work, it is perilous work, to thrust your hand in the sun
And pull out a spark of immortal flame to warm the hearts of men:
But Prometheus, torn by the claws and beaks whose task is never done,
Would be tortured another eternity to go stealing fire again.”

Joyce Kilmer

Main Street and Other Poems (1917), The Proud Poet

Men , Hell , Sun , Heart

“There is joy over disappointment
And delight in hopes that were vain.
Each poet is glad there was no cure
To stop his lonely pain.
For nothing keeps a poet
In his high singing mood
Like unappeasable hunger
For unattainable food.”

Joyce Kilmer

Main Street and Other Poems (1917), Apology

Hunger , Pain , Food , Hope

“For blows on the fort of evil
That never shows a breach,
For terrible life-long races
To a goal no foot can reach,
For reckless leaps into darkness
With hands outstretched to a star,
There is jubilation in Heaven
Where the great dead poets are.”

Joyce Kilmer

Main Street and Other Poems (1917), Apology

Life , Star , Evil , Dead

“At present, I am a poet trying to be a soldier. To tell the truth, I am not interested in writing nowadays, except in so far as writing is the expression of something beautiful … The only sort of book I care to write about the war is the sort people will read after the war is over — a century after it is over.”

Joyce Kilmer

A letter home, included in Joyce Kilmer, Poems, Essays and Letters (1918) edited by Robert Holliday

War , People , Truth , Books

“When you say of the making of ballads and songs that it is woman's work
You forget all the fighting poets that have been in every land.”

Joyce Kilmer

Main Street and Other Poems (1917), The Proud Poet

Fight , Forgetting