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The Bedbug and Selected Poetry QUOTES

The Bedbug and Selected Poetry QUOTES

1 " Formerly I believed books were made like this: a poet came, lightly opened his lips, and the inspired fool burst into song – if you please! But it seems, before they can launch a song, poets must tramp for days with callused feet, and the sluggish fish of the imagination flounders softly in the slush of the heart. And while, with twittering rhymes, they boil a broth of loves and nightingales, the tongueless street merely writhes for lack of something to shout or say "

― Vladimir Mayakovsky , The Bedbug and Selected Poetry

2 " Have you seen
a dog lick the hand that thrashed it?! "

― Vladimir Mayakovsky , The Bedbug and Selected Poetry

3 " If you like
I'll be furious flesh elemental,
or- changing to tones that the sunset arouses- if you like-
I'll be extraordinary gentle,
not a man but - a cloud in trousers. "

― Vladimir Mayakovsky , The Bedbug and Selected Poetry

4 " Then there's amortization,
the deadliest of all;
amortization
of the heart and soul. "

― Vladimir Mayakovsky , The Bedbug and Selected Poetry

5 " Usher: Why do you play only on the black keys [of the piano]? I suppose you think black is good enough for the proletariat. You play on all the keys only for the bourgeoisie, is that it?

Oleg Bard: Please, citizen, please! I'm concentrating on the white ones!

Usher: So you think white is best? Play on both!

Oleg Bard: I am playing on both!

Usher: So you compromise with [the] Whites, opportunist! "

― Vladimir Mayakovsky , The Bedbug and Selected Poetry

6 " Oleg Bard: I understand, but by virtue of that power of imagination which, according to [Georgi] Plekhanov, is granted to Marxists, I can already see as through a prism, so to speak, the triumph of your class as symbolized by your sublime, ravishing, elegant, and class-conscious wedding! "

― Vladimir Mayakovsky , The Bedbug and Selected Poetry

7 " There’s less and less love,
and less and less daring,
and time
is a battering ram
against my head.

— Vladimir Mayakovsky, from “Conversation With a Tax Collector About Poetry,” The Bedbug and Selected Poetry. (Indiana University Press October 22, 1975) Originally published 1929. "

― Vladimir Mayakovsky , The Bedbug and Selected Poetry