Poetry famous quotes

Even when poetry has a meaning, as it usually has, it may be inadvisable to draw it out . . .. Perfect understanding will sometimes almost extinguish pleasure.
-- A. E. Housman

#Perfect #Poetry #Understanding

Poems very seldom consist of poetry and nothing else; and pleasure can be derived also from their other ingredients. I am convinced that most readers, when they think they are admiring poetry, are deceived by inability to analyse their sensations, and that they are really admiring, not the poetry of the passage before them, but something else in it, which they like better than poetry.
-- A. E. Housman

#Art #Thinking #Poetry

I could no more define poetry than a terrier can define a rat.
-- A. E. Housman

#Poetry #Rats

Poetry is unfallen speech. Paradise knew no other, for no other would suffice to answer the need of those ecstatic days of innocence.
-- Abraham Coles

#Poetry #Needs #Answers

Poets are born, not paid.
-- Addison Mizner

#Poetry #Poet #Born

Most people ignore most poetry because most poetry ignores most people.
-- Adrian Mitchell

#People #Poetry #Poetry Is

... passion for survival is the great theme of women's poetry.
-- Adrienne Rich

#Passion #Poetry #Survival

Can you remember? when we thought the poets taught how to live?
-- Adrienne Rich

#Life #Poetry #Taught

Reality, the oppressor's tongue.
-- Adrienne Rich

#Reality #Poetry #Tongue

A poet cannot be a Party member ... without paying the price.
-- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

#Party #Poetry #Poet

Truth shines the brighter, clad in verse.
-- Alexander Pope

#Poetry #Shining #Verses

Pretty conceptions, fine metaphors, glittering expressions, and something of a neat cast of verse are properly the dress, gems, or loose ornaments of poetry.
-- Alexander Pope

#Expression #Poetry #Dresses

A poem round and perfect as a star.
-- Alexander Smith

#Stars #Perfect #Poetry

Though my verse but roam the air And murmur in the trees, You may discern a purpose there, As in music of the bees.
-- Alfred Austin

#Air #Poetry #Tree

Each memorable verse of a true poet has two or three times the written content.
-- Alfred de Musset

#Memorable #Two #Poetry

And this gray spirit yearning in desire To follow knowledge like a sinking star, Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
-- Alfred Lord Tennyson

#Stars #Poetry #Desire

But now, you are twain, you are cloven apart Flesh of his flesh, but heart of my heart.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne

#Heart #Poetry #Flesh

Much contemporary verse reads like failed short-short stories rather than failed poetry.
-- Alice Fulton

#Poetry #Stories #Literature

Poets are mysterious, but a poet when all is said is not much more mysterious than a banker.
-- Allen Tate

#Poetry #Bankers #Mysterious

We need a safe place, a reserve of truth, a place where words kindle ideas and set ideas sparking off in others, a word sanctuary. Poetry is this gathering place of words.
-- Allison Mackie

#Ideas #Poetry #Gathering

Poetry is the morning dream of great minds.
-- Alphonse de Lamartine

#Dream #Morning #Poetry

Poetry has been the guardian angel of humanity in all ages.
-- Alphonse de Lamartine

#Angel #Poetry #Humanity

Poetry is the most concentrated form of literature; it is the most emotionalized and powerful way in which thought can be presented ...
-- Amy Lowell

#Powerful #Poetry #Literature

I never deny poems when they come; whatever I am doing, whatever I am writing, I lay it aside and attend to the arriving poem.
-- Amy Lowell

#Writing #Poetry #Arriving

At the outset, it is only liking, not understanding, that matters. Gaps in understanding ... are not only important, they are perhaps even welcome, like clearings in the woods, the better to allow the heart's rays to stream out without obstacle. The unlit shadows should remain obscure, which is the very condition of enchantment.
-- Andre Breton

#Heart #Poetry #Understanding

Forests may be gorgeous but there is nothing more alive than a tree that learns how to grow in a cemetery.
-- Andrea Gibson

#Inspirational #Tree #Poetry

You never wish on shooting stars. You wish on the ones that have the courage to shine where they are.
-- Andrea Gibson

#Inspirational #Stars #Poetry

This is my heartbeat like yours, it is a hatchet It can build a house or tear one down.
-- Andrea Gibson

#Inspirational #Poetry #House

I'm never gonna wait that extra twenty minutes to text you back and I'm never gonna play hard to get when I know your life has been hard enough already.
-- Andrea Gibson

#Inspirational #Play #Poetry

Early poems are a thing it takes years to live down.
-- Angela Thirkell

#Years #Poetry

Poems are my link with the times, with the new life of my people.
-- Anna Akhmatova

#People #Poetry #New Life

But Fear and the Muse in turn guard the place Where the banished poet has gone And the night that comes with quickened pace Is ignorant of dawn.
-- Anna Akhmatova

#Night #Poetry #Ignorant

The author of haiku should be absent, and only the haiku present.
-- Anne Bancroft

#Poetry #Should #Haiku

I believe in solitude broken like bread by poetry.
-- Anne Hebert

#Believe #Broken #Poetry

Poetry cannot be explained, it must be lived.
-- Anne Hebert

#Poetry

Poetry colors beings, objects, landscapes and sensations with a kind of new and particular light, which is in fact that of the poet's emotions.
-- Anne Hebert

#Light #Color #Poetry

I wanted a line in a poem to be the hollow ney of the dervish orchestra whose plaintive wail is a call to God. But all I achieved was awkward shrieking. Not even the pure shriek of a reed in the rain.
-- Anne Michaels

#Rain #Poetry #Awkward

Each word bears its weight, so you have to read my poems quite slowly.
-- Anne Stevenson

#Poetry #Weight #Bears

A poem might be defined as thinking about feelings - about human feelings and frailties.
-- Anne Stevenson

#Thinking #Poetry #Feelings

Each man carries within him the soul of a poet who died young.
-- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

#Men #Poetry #Soul

Admittedly or not, conscious or unconscious, the poetic state, a transcendent experience of life, is what the public is fundamentally seeking through love, crime, drugs, war, or insurrection.
-- Antonin Artaud

#War #Poetry #Drug

A Poem should be palpable and mute As a globed fruit.
-- Archibald MacLeish

#Poetry #Fruit #Should

A poem should not mean but be.
-- Archibald MacLeish

#Mean #Poetry #Should

Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.
-- Aristotle

#Philosophical #History #Poetry

Poetry should be vital--either stirring our blood by its divine movements or snatching our breath by its divine perfection. To do both is supreme glory, to do either is enduring fame.
-- Augustine Birrell

#Blood #Perfection #Poetry

Most painters have painted themselves. So have most poets: not so palpably indeed, but more assiduously. Some have done nothing else.
-- Augustus William Hare

#Poetry #Done #Poet

Poetry is to philosophy what the Sabbath is to the rest of the week.
-- Augustus William Hare

#Philosophy #Poetry #Week

If Painting be Poetry's sister, she can only be a sister Anne, who will see nothing but a flock of sheep, while the other bodies forth a troop of dragoons with drawn sabres and white-plumed helmets.
-- Augustus William Hare

#Sheep #White #Poetry

The poet sees things as they look. Is this having a faculty the less? or a sense the more?
-- Augustus William Hare

#Poetry #Looks #Poet

Poetry is important. No less than science, it seeks a hold upon reality, and the closeness of its approach is the test of its success.
-- Babette Deutsch

#Reality #Poetry #Important

There is no end to grief. Nor no end to poetry.
-- Babette Deutsch

#Grief #Poetry #Ends

Who, except the poets, reads poetry?
-- Babette Deutsch

#Poetry #Poet

I rarely think of poetry as something I make happen; it is more accurate to say that it happens to me. Like a summer storm, a house afire, or the coincidence of both on the same day.
-- Barbara Kingsolver

#Summer #Thinking #Poetry

The poets have familiarized more people with history than have the historians ...
-- Barbara Tuchman

#People #History #Poetry

Still may syllables jar with time, Still may reason war with rhyme, Resting never!
-- Ben Jonson

#War #Poetry #May

What was the function of poetry if not to improve the petty, cautious minds of evasive children?
-- Bharati Mukherjee

#Children #Poetry #Mind

Don't saddle me with your ideals, and spare me all your guilt. For a poet with all the answers, has never yet been built.
-- Billy Bragg

#Poetry #Guilt #Answers

How do you define a poet? It's very simple. Anyone declaring that he is a poet, is a poet.
-- Billy Cannon

#Simple #Poetry #Poet

You I am sure will forgive me for sincerely remarking that you might curb your magnanimity and be more of an artist, and 'load every rift' of your subject with ore.
-- Bob Dylan

#Artist #Forgive Me #Poetry

A poem is a naked person... Some people say that I am a poet.
-- Bob Dylan

#People #Poetry #Naked

Poetry confronts in the most clear-eyed way just those emotions which consciousness wishes to slide by.
-- C. K. Williams

#Poetry #Wish #Way

Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.
-- Carl Sandburg

#Writing #Echoes #Poetry

Poetry is the opening and closing of a door, leaving those who look through to guess about what is seen during the moment.
-- Carl Sandburg

#Doors #Poetry #Leaving

I've written some poetry I don't understand myself.
-- Carl Sandburg

#Poetry #Literature #Poetry Is

Poetry is a packsack of invisible keepsakes.
-- Carl Sandburg

#Poetry #Invisible #Keepsakes

I have written some poetry that I don't understand myself.
-- Carl Sandburg

#Art #Poetry

And all poets love dust and mist because all the last answers. Go running back to dust and mist.
-- Carl Sandburg

#Running #Dust #Poetry

I am always pleased to be asked to write a poem.
-- Carol Ann Duffy

#Writing #Poetry

The poetic myths are dead; and the poetic image, which is the myth of the individual, reigns in their stead.
-- Cecil Day-Lewis

#Art #Poetry #Reign

Remember, writing poetry is like making love: one will never know whether one's own pleasure is shared.
-- Cesare Pavese

#Writing #Poetry #Making Love

In most men there exists a poet who died young, whom the man survived.
-- Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve

#Men #Poetry #He Man

Always be a poet, even in prose.
-- Charles Baudelaire

#Writing #Poetry #Literature

It is at once by way of poetry and through poetry, as with music, that the soul glimpses splendors from beyond the tomb; and when an exquisite poem brings one's eyes to the point of tears, those tears are not evidence of an excess of joy, they are witness far more to an exacerbated melancholy, a disposition of the nerves, a nature exiled among imperfect things, which would like to possess, without delay, a paradise revealed on this very same earth.
-- Charles Baudelaire

#Eye #Poetry #Joy

If a poet knows more about a horse than he does about heaven, he might better stick to the horse, and some day the horse may carry him into heaven.
-- Charles Ives

#Horse #Poetry #Heaven

The true poet dreams being awake.
-- Charles Lamb

#Dream #Poetry #Poet

I allow no hot-beds in the gardens of Parnassus.
-- Charles Lamb

#Garden #Poetry #Simplicity

The poem, for me, is simply the first sound realized in the modality of being.
-- Charles Olson

#Poetry #Sound #Firsts

Poetry is an orphan of silence. The words never quite equal the experience behind them.
-- Charles Simic

#Poetry #Silence #Never Quit

Wanted: a needle swift enough to sew this poem into a blanket.
-- Charles Simic

#Firefighter #Poetry #Enough

we have let rhetoric do the job of poetry.
-- Cherrie Moraga

#Jobs #Poetry #Rhetoric

A poet must have died as a man before he is worth anything as a poet.
-- Christian Morgenstern

#Men #Poetry #Poet

Poetry is a language in which man explores his own amazement.
-- Christopher Fry

#Men #Poetry #Language

Poetry is the language in which man explores his own amazement . . . says heaven and earth in one word . . . speaks of himself and his predicament as though for the first time.
-- Christopher Fry

#Men #Poetry #Heaven

He that would earn the Poet's sacred name, Must write for future as for present ages.
-- Christopher Pearse Cranch

#Writing #Names #Poetry

Pound had argued - and Eliot had helped him prove - that a poem could be sustained by memorable moments. Olson proved that it could be sustained by unmemorable ones, provided that the texture of the accumulated jottings avoided the sound of failed poetry.
-- Clive James

#Memorable #Poetry #Sound

One way or another, all the poets of the thirties and forties reacted to Auden, either by rejecting him or trying to absorb him.
-- Clive James

#Poetry #Trying #Literature

My poetry has become the way of my giving out what music is within me.
-- Countee Cullen

#Giving #Poetry #Way

I approach poetry and spirituality like literary nitroglycerin -- a little can do a lot and you better damn well be careful with it.
-- Craig Johnson

#Poetry #Littles #Spirituality

Poetry is news brought to the mountains by a unicorn and an echo.
-- Czeslaw Milosz

#Art #Echoes #Poetry

Zen Makes use, to a great extent, of poetical expressions; Zen is wedded to poetry.
-- D.T. Suzuki

#Expression #Poetry #Use

Poetry speaks most effectively and inclusively (whether in free or formal verse) when it recognizes its connection - without apology - to its musical and ritualistic origins.
-- Dana Gioia

#Art #Apology #Poetry

Poetry offers a way of understanding and expressing existence that is fundamentally different from conceptual thought.
-- Dana Gioia

#Art #Poetry #Understanding

Before men ever wrote in clay they cast their words in verse and line, rythymbound in poets' minds, defying time and age.
-- Dave Beard

#Men #Poetry #Mind

In its use of words poetry is just the reverse of science. Very definite thoughts do occur, but not because the words are so chosen as logically to bar out all possibilities save one.
-- David Daiches

#Poetry #Bars #Use

The poetry from the eighteenth century was prose; the prose from the seventeenth century was poetry.
-- David Hare

#Poetry #Century #Prose

The beauty of reality-based art - art underwritten by reality hunger - is that it's perfectly situated between life itself and (unattainable) "life as art".
-- David Shields

#Art #Reality #Poetry

And hence the poet must seek to be essentially anonymous, He must die a little death each morning, He must swallow his toad and study his vomit as Baudelaire studied la charogne of Jeanne Duval.
-- Delmore Schwartz

#Morning #Poetry #Toads

Poetry must have something in it that is barbaric, vast and wild.
-- Denis Diderot

#Poetry

We have the words in our pockets, obscure directions. The old ones have taken away the light of their presence....
-- Denise Levertov

#Taken #Light #Poetry

Prophetic utterance, like poetic utterance, transforms experience and moves the receiver to new attitudes. The kinds of experience--the recognitions or revelations--out of which both prophecy and poetry emerge, are such as to stir the prophet or poet to speech that may exceed their own known capacities; they are "inspired," they breathe in revelation and breathe out new words; and by so doing they transfer over to the listener or reader a parallel experience, a parallel intensity, which impels that person into new attitudes and new actions.
-- Denise Levertov

#Attitude #Moving #Poetry