The doctor punched my vein, the captain called me Cain…

Keelhaul the poets in the vestry chairs.

— Karl Shapiro

To make the child in your own image is a capital crime, for your image is not worth repeating. The child knows this and…

— Karl Shapiro

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

— Karl Shapiro

In the tight belly of the dead, Burrow with hungry head, And inlay maggots like a jewel.

— Karl Shapiro

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

— Karl Shapiro

Every war is its own excuse. That's why they're all surrounded with ideals. That's why they're all crusades.

— Karl Shapiro

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

— Karl Shapiro

The proverbist knows nothing of the two sides of a question. He knows only the roundness of answers.

— Karl Shapiro

Poets of course are even more unpredictable than other writers, overwhelmed as they are by the moment they inhabit and finding it difficult to…

— Karl Shapiro

Self-knowledge is a dangerous thing, tending to make man shallow or insane.

— Karl Shapiro

Laughter and grief join hands. Always the heart Clumps in the breast with heavy stride; The face grows lined and wrinkled like a chart,…

— Karl Shapiro

But with exquisite breathing you smile, with satisfaction of love, And I touch you again as you tick in the silence and settle in…

— Karl Shapiro

I see slip to the curb the long machines Out of whose warm and windowed rooms pirouette Shellacked with silk and light The hard…

— Karl Shapiro

Lawyers love paper. They eat, sleep and dream paper. They turn paper into gold, and their files are colorful and their language neoclassical and…

— Karl Shapiro

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

— Karl Shapiro