In celebration of World Poetry Day, here’s a compilation of our favorite poetry quotes from famous poets.
They center on different emotions and life experiences – such as femininity, romance, heartbreak, love, loss, pain and hope.
“You may shoot me with your words, you may cut me with your eyes, you may kill me with your hatefulness, but still, like air, I’ll rise!” Maya Angelou
Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?
Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise. Maya Angelou
“Here’s to the security guards who maybe had a degree in another land. Here’s to the manicurist who had to leave her family to come here, painting the nails, scrubbing the feet of strangers. Here’s to the janitors who don’t understand English yet work hard despite it all. Here’s to the fast food workers who work hard to see their family smile. Here’s to the laundry man at the Marriott who told me with the sparkle in his eyes how he was an engineer in Peru. Here’s to the bus driver, the Turkish Sufi who almost danced when I quoted Rumi. Here’s to the harvesters who live in fear of being deported for coming here to open the road for their future generation. Here’s to the taxi drivers from Nigeria, Ghana, Egypt and India who gossip amongst themselves. Here is to them waking up at 4am, calling home to hear the voices of their loved ones. Here is to their children, to the children who despite it all become artists, writers, teachers, doctors, lawyers, activists and rebels. Here’s to international money transfer. For never forgetting home. Here’s to their children who carry the heartbeats of their motherland and even in sleep, speak with pride about their fathers. Keep on.” – Ijeoma Umebinyuo, Questions for Ada
“Stay away
from men who peel the skin
of other women, forcing you to
wear them.” – Ijeoma Umebinyuo, Questions for Ada
“Loneliness is a sign you are in desperate need of yourself” – Rupi Kaur, milk and honey
“i want to apologize to all the women i have called beautiful
before i’ve called them intelligent or brave
i am sorry i made it sound as though
something as simple as what you’re born with
is all you have to be proud of
when you have broken mountains with your wit
from now on i will say things like
you are resilient, or you are extraordinary
not because i don’t think you’re beautiful
but because i need you to know
you are more than that” – Rupi Kaur, milk and honey
“Some girls are full of heartache and poetry and those are the kind of girls who try to save wolves instead of running away from them.” – Nikita Gill, Your Body is an Ocean: Love and Other Experiments
“Your heart will fix itself. It’s your mind you need to worry about. Your mind where you locked the memories, your mind where you have kept pieces of the ones that hurt you, that still cut through you like shards of glass. Your mind will keep you up at night, make you cry, destroy you over and over again. You need to convince your mind that it has to let go…because your heart already knows how to heal.” – Nikita Gill
“Stars open among the lilies.
Are you not blinded by such expressionless sirens?
This is the silence of astounded souls.” – Sylvia Plath, Crossing the Water
“I hate to hear you all talk about all women as if they were fine ladies instead of rational creatures. None of us want to be in calm waters all our lives” – Jane Austen, Persuasion
“If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I’m neurotic as hell. I’ll be flying back and forth between one mutually exclusive thing and another for the rest of my days” – Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
“if he was
my cup of tea,
then you are
my cup of
coffee.
tea simply
isn’t
enough
for me
sometimes,
but
coffee
can get me
through
anything.
– did i make you up?” – Amanda Lovelace, The Princess Saves Herself in This One (Women Are Some Kind Of Magic #1)
Excerpt:
“I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind.” – Anne Sexton, Her Kind
