Give me hunger, pain and want, Shut me out with shame and failure From your doors of gold and fame, Give me your shabbiest, weariest hunger! But leave me a little love.
Carl SandburgRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote describes poetry as an expression of yearning and exploration of the unknown.
Carl Sandburg's quote presents poetry as a profound means of expressing the deep-seated emotions and desires of the human experience. It encapsulates the struggle between the mundane and the unattainable, highlighting poetry's role in conveying our aspirations, our curiosities about life, and the fleeting beauty of existence. The imagery he employs suggests that poetry serves not only as a creative outlet but also as a way to confront the mysteries of life and nature.
Themes
PoetryExpressionArtYearningUnknownBeauty
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a creative writing class to inspire students to explore their emotions through poetry.
More from Carl Sandburg
All quotes →Nothing happens... but first a dream.
Carl SandburgRead
Read the dictionary from A to Izzard today. Get a vocabulary. Brush up on your diction. See whether wisdom is just a lot of language.
Carl SandburgRead
My name is Truth and I am the most elusive captive in the universe.
Carl SandburgRead
There is an eagle in me that wants to soar, and there is a hippopotamus in me that wants to wallow in the mud.
Carl SandburgRead
A liar goes in fine clothes, a liar goes in rags, a liar is a liar, clothes or no clothes.
Carl SandburgRead
Similar quotes
I don't consider writing a quiet, closet act._x000D_ I consider it a real physical act._x000D_ When I'm home writing on the typewriter, I go crazy._x000D_ I move like a monkey._x000D_ I've wet myself, I've come in my pants writing.
Patti SmithRead
The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion.
T. S. EliotRead
The only story that seems worth writing is a cry, a shot, a scream. A story should break the reader's heart.
Susan SontagRead
I want young Indian composers to be able to do more than just film music. I want to give them the skills that will enable them to create their own palette of sounds instead of having to write formulaic music. It doesn't matter if they become sound engineers, producers, composers or performers - I want them to be as imaginative as they like.
A. R. RahmanRead
Under Stalin, artists weren't dissidents; all they hoped was to survive and write.
Simon Sebag-MontefioreRead
Art is our defense against hysteria and death.
Theodore RoethkeRead