“All night wild impulses
The only way to find a path
is to set fire to your life.”
Delicate repose
a butterfly balances
on a petal's tip.
My gardenia
plum, white, ready to burst
never blooms.
Mimic the sand
mimic the waves, clever
 snowy plover.
“Poetry is like a bird, it ignores all frontiers.”
“The Kings who have died one by one are now reborn in poet’s hearts.”
“Poetry is from the frontiers of consciousness.”
“Poetry is sort of a homecoming.”
“I think poetry must stay open all night in beautiful cellars.”
“You are the butterfly and you are gone.”
“The only thing that can save the world is the reclaiming of the awareness of the world. That’s what poetry does.”
“All night wild impulses
The only way to find a path
is to set fire to your life.”
“Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason.”
“Wine is bottled poetry.”
“Words are alive — cut them and they bleed.”
“Poetry is the utterance of deep and heart-felt truth:
the true poet is near the oracle.”
“The poetry of the earth is never dead.”
“A poet must achieve a balance between solitude and solidarity, between feeling
and action, between intimacy of mankind and the revelation of nature.”
“Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”
“Always be a poet, even in prose.”
“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection.”
“A poet looks at the world the way a man looks at a woman.”
“Poetry is the eternal graffiti written in the heart of everyone.”
“Poetry is a lion because it eats and intensifies natural speech.”
“All night wild impulses
The only way to find a path
is to set fire to your life.”
A poet and writer of the natural world, Terri Glass mentored under William Stafford and Robert Bly.