Karl Shapiro Quotations

The modern essay has regained a good deal of its literary status in our time, much to the credit of Joseph Epstein.

Leo Connellan has retained his soul and voice in Provincetown and Other Poems.

Laughter and grief join hands. Always the heart Clumps in the breast with heavy stride; The face grows lined and wrinkled like a chart, The eyes bloodshot with tears and tide. Let the wind blow, for many a man shall die.

Already old, the question Who shall die? Becomes unspoken Who is innocent?

The good poet sticks to his real loves, to see within the realm of possibility. He never tries to hold hands with God or the human race.

The body, what is it, Father, but a sign To love the force that grows us, to give back What in Thy palm is senselessness and mud?

My soul is now her day, my day her night, So I lie down, and so I rise.

To make the child in your own image is a capital crime, for your image is not worth repeating. The child knows this and you know it. Consequently you hate each other.

How something important happens is the business of historians and newspapers, the effect it has is the business of philosophers and writers and especially poets.

A man's house is his stage. Others walk on to play their bit parts. Now and again a soliloquy, a birth, an adultery.