19 Quotes by Rae Armantrout

Poetry wants to make things mean more than they mean, says someone, as if we knew how much things meant, and in what unit of measure.

We sleep together in the dark but confuse light with love.

Thus drivers inching southward will see the phalanx of birds heading west as one spontaneous gesture.

Metaphor is ritual sacrifice. It kills the look-alike. No, metaphor is homeopathy.

But here I hold your dream in my poem.

I know you by your willingness.

Today could be described as a retired man humming tunelessly to himself.

So much happiness is caged in language, ready to burst out anytime and fade.

Carried by light, images remain while sensation is so evanescent as to be always beyond belief.