Poetry Quotes

Poetry being the sign of that which all men desire, even though the desire be unconscious, intensity of life or completeness of experience, the universality of its appeal is a matter of course.

I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.

The musician is perhaps the most modest of animals, but he is also the proudest. It is he who invented the sublime art of ruining poetry.

Unfortunately, poetry is not born in noise, in crowds, or on a bus. There have to be four walls and the certainty that the telephone will not ring. That's what writing is all about.

It's just poetry, beauty and love. How hard can that be to act?

I credit poetry for making this space-walk possible.

One merit of poetry few persons will deny: it says more and in fewer words than prose.

Poetry operates by hints and dark suggestions. It is full of secrets and hidden formulae, like a witch's brew.

Money is a kind of poetry.

Such discussions help us very little to enjoy what has been well done in art or poetry, to discriminate between what is more and what is less excellent in them, or to use words like beauty, excellence, art, poetry, with a more precise meaning than they would otherwise have.

To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion all in one.

Stadium rock and commercial rock are the opposite of what poetry needs. An audience of around 200 is ideal for poetry.

Our most famous writers are Faulkner and Eudora Welty and Flannery O'Connor. It would make sense that the poetry would reflect some of those same values, some of the same techniques.

But I don't think that poetry is a good, to use a contemporary word, venue, for current events.

Well, probably I was fed up with concrete poetry. There was a lot of bad concrete poetry and besides, it was confused with visual poetry which was completely different.

Poetry consists in a rhyming dictionary and things seen.

An experienced reader uses the poem as an agent of inquiry. This makes poetry very exciting, unstable, and interactive.

It should here be added that poetry habitually takes the form of verse.

Science arose from poetry... when times change the two can meet again on a higher level as friends.

People wish to be poets more than they wish to write poetry, and that's a mistake. One should wish to celebrate more than one wishes to be celebrated.

Poetry is a form of mathematics, a highly rigorous relationship with words.

The completely solitary self: that's where poetry comes from, and it gets isolated by crisis, and those crises are often very intimate also.

Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting that speaks.

Let me read you some of my poetry. My poetry just takes me to another level.

In my late teenage years, I developed a real passion for it, and wrote a lot of poetry.

Even the people who have had success and made money writing these books of fiction seem to feel the need to pretend it's no big deal, or part of a natural progression from poetry to fiction, but often it's really just about the money, the perceived prestige.

If there's no money in poetry, neither is there poetry in money.

The crown of literature is poetry.

They need to learn poetry. They don't need to learn about poetry. They don't need to be told how to interpret poetry. They don't need to be told how to understand poetry. They need to learn it.

If a line of poetry strays into my memory, my skin bristles so that the razor ceases to act.