Poetry Quotes

That's one of the great things about poetry; one realises that one does one's little turn - that you're just part of the great crop, as it were.

How do poems grow? They grow out of your life.

The flower is the poetry of reproduction. It is an example of the eternal seductiveness of life.

My next project is to get back to that. Actually, to learn how to write poetry. I'm not kidding.

There are men who can write poetry, and there are men who can read balance sheets. The men who can read balance sheets cannot write.

Pound's translation of Chinese poetry was maybe the most important thing I read. Eliot a little bit later.

Serious poetry deals with the fundamental conflicts that cannot be logically resolved: we can state the conflicts rationally, but reason does not relieve us of them.

Poetry comes alive to me through recitation.

The gross heathenism of civilization has generally destroyed nature, and poetry, and all that is spiritual.

Since the printing press came into being, poetry has ceased to be the delight of the whole community of man; it has become the amusement and delight of the few.

Poetry is indispensable - if I only knew what for.

It's always good when women win things in fiction because it tends to be more male-dominated, unlike poetry, which is more equal.

Art works because it appeals to certain faculties of the mind. Music depends on details of the auditory system, painting and sculpture on the visual system. Poetry and literature depend on language.

The beauty, the poetry of the fear in their eyes. I didn't mind going to jail for, what, five, six hours? It was absolutely worth it.

Gil Thorpe is a great diversion and is to book writing as poetry is to prose.

On July 26, 1916, I announced to all my friends in America that from now on I resolved to write no more poems in the classical language, and to begin my experiments in writing poetry in the so-called vulgar tongue of the people.

The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.

I don't think Auden liked my poetry very much, he's very Anglican.

While also, importantly, not wanting to dumb it down or pretend the days of 'difficult' poetry are over, because we live in a pluralist culture and there's room for 'difficult' poetry alongside rap and everything else. And poetry won't be for everyone, but everyone should have the choice.

The poet exposes himself to the risk. All that has been said about poetry, all that he has learned about poetry, is only a partial assurance.

In my opinion, the most significant works of the twentieth century are those that rise beyond the conceptual tyranny of genre; they are, at the same time, poetry, criticism, narrative, drama, etc.

If you want to see mankind fully, look at a family. Within the family minds become organically one, and for this reason the family is total poetry.

My friends never talk to me about my poetry because they're embarrassed that I write it or they're embarrassed by what I write about which are not such extraordinarily terrifying things, but they are the state of human existence.

I'm hopefully touring with Colin Baker next year in Perfect Strangers. I have performed with Sylvia Simms in poetry and music evenings. I would love to do those for the rest of my career - they are so fun and witty.

Ye stars! which are the poetry of heaven!

In a general way, I want to be a kind of flag-waver, bunting hanger-up, drum-beater, you name it, for poetry.

It is true that short forms of poetry have been cultivated in the Far East more than in modern Europe; but in all European literature short forms of poetry are to be found - indeed quite as short as anything in Japanese.

I look for poetry in English because it's the only language I read.

The poet doesn't invent. He listens.

Who writes poetry imbibes honey from the poisoned lips of life.