Poetry Quotes:

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

topic: Inspirational, Tree, Poetry

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

source: Andrea Gibson (Poet) (2013). “Pole Dancing to Gospel Hymns”, p.17, SCB Distributors

topic: Inspirational, Stars, Poetry, Shooting Star

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.

topic: Inspirational, Poetry, House, Hatchet

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

topic: Inspirational, Play, Poetry, Enough Already

- Angela Thirkell

topic: Years, Poetry

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

- Anna Akhmatova

topic: 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

topic: Night, Poetry, Ignorant

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

- Anne Bancroft

topic: Poetry, Should, Haiku, Self Glorification

I believe in solitude broken like bread by poetry.

- Anne Hebert

source: Anne Hébert, Alan Brown (1975). “Poems”, Don Mills, Ont. : Musson Book Company

topic: Believe, Broken, Poetry

Poetry cannot be explained, it must be lived.

- Anne Hebert

topic: 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

source: Anne Hébert, Alan Brown (1975). “Poems”, Don Mills, Ont. : Musson Book Company

topic: 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

topic: Rain, Poetry, Awkward

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

- Anne Stevenson

topic: Poetry, Weight, Bears

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

- Anne Stevenson

topic: Thinking, Poetry, Feelings, Human Frailties

Each man carries within him the soul of a poet who died young.

- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

topic: Men, Poetry, Soul, Die Young, Inner Child

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

source: Antonin Artaud (1958). “The Theater and Its Double”, p.122, Grove Press

topic: War, Poetry, Drug, Insurrection, Transcendent

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

- Archibald MacLeish

topic: Poetry, Fruit, Should

A poem should not mean but be.

- Archibald MacLeish

source: "Ars Poetica" l. 23 (1926)

topic: Mean, Poetry, Should

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

- Aristotle

topic: 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

source: Augustine Birrell (1885). “Obiter Dicta ...: Carlye. On the alleged obscurity of Mr. Browning's poetry. Truth-hunting. Actors. A rogue's memoirs. The via media. Falstaff [by George Radford”

topic: Blood, Perfection, Poetry

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

Poetry is to philosophy what the Sabbath is to the rest of the week.

topic: Poetry, Done, Poet

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.

topic: Philosophy, Poetry, Week

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

topic: Sheep, White, Poetry

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.

topic: Poetry, Looks, Poet

- Babette Deutsch

topic: Reality, Poetry, Important, Closeness

There is no end to grief. Nor no end to poetry.

- Babette Deutsch

source: Babette Deutsch (1969). “The collected poems”

topic: Grief, Poetry, Ends

Who, except the poets, reads poetry?

- Babette Deutsch

topic: 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

topic: Summer, Thinking, Poetry

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

- Barbara Tuchman

topic: People, History, Poetry

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

- Ben Jonson

topic: War, Poetry, May, Syllables

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

- Bharati Mukherjee

source: Bharati Mukherjee (2007). “The Middleman and Other Stories”, p.194, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

topic: 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

source: Song: I Don't Need This Pressure Ron

topic: 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

topic: 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

topic: Artist, Forgive Me, Poetry, Magnanimity, Rift

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

- Bob Dylan

topic: People, Poetry, Naked

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

- C. K. Williams

topic: Poetry, Wish, Way

Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.

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

topic: Writing, Echoes, Poetry, Inspirational Dance, Great Poetry

I've written some poetry I don't understand myself.

topic: Doors, Poetry, Leaving, Closing Up, Closing Down

Poetry is a packsack of invisible keepsakes.

topic: Poetry, Literature, Poetry Is

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

topic: Poetry, Invisible, Keepsakes

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

topic: Art, Poetry

I am always pleased to be asked to write a poem.

topic: Running, Dust, Poetry, Running Back

- Carol Ann Duffy

topic: 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

source: Cecil Day Lewis (1969). “The Poetic Image”

topic: Art, Poetry, Reign

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

- Cesare Pavese

topic: Writing, Poetry, Making Love, Writing Poetry

In most men there exists a poet who died young, whom the man survived.

- Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve

topic: Men, Poetry, He Man

Always be a poet, even in prose.

- Charles Baudelaire

topic: 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

topic: Eye, Poetry, Joy, Imperfect Things

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

topic: Horse, Poetry, Heaven

The true poet dreams being awake.

- Charles Lamb

topic: Dream, Poetry, Poet

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

- Charles Lamb

topic: Garden, Poetry, Simplicity

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

- Charles Olson

source: Charles Olson (1979). “Muthologos: the collected lectures & interviews”

topic: Poetry, Sound, Firsts

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

- Charles Simic

source: Charles Simic (1985). “The Uncertain Certainty: Interviews, Essays, and Notes on Poetry”

topic: Poetry, Silence, Never Quit

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

- Charles Simic

source: Charles Simic (1990). “Selected Poems, 1963-1983”, George Braziller

topic: Firefighter, Poetry, Enough

we have let rhetoric do the job of poetry.

- Cherrie Moraga

source: Cherríe Moraga (1983). “Loving in the war years: lo que nunca pasó por sus labios”, South End Pr

topic: Jobs, Poetry, Rhetoric

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

- Christian Morgenstern

topic: Men, Poetry, Poet

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

- Christopher Fry

source: Christopher Fry (1997). “The Early Days”

topic: Men, Poetry, Language, Great Poetry, Prose And Poetry

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

source: Time, New York, April 3, 1950.

topic: Men, Poetry, Heaven

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

- Christopher Pearse Cranch

source: Christopher Pearse Cranch (1844). “Poems”, p.38

topic: 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

topic: Memorable, Poetry, Sound, Memorable Moments

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

topic: Poetry, Trying, Literature, Auden

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

- Countee Cullen

source: Countee Cullen, Gerald Lyn Early (1991). “My soul's high song: the collected writings of Countee Cullen, voice of the Harlem Renaissance”, Doubleday Books

topic: 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

source: Craig Johnson (2004). “The Cold Dish: A Longmire Mystery”, p.277, Penguin

topic: Poetry, Littles, Spirituality

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

- Czeslaw Milosz

topic: Art, Echoes, Poetry

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

- D.T. Suzuki

topic: 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

topic: Art, Apology, Poetry

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

- Dana Gioia

source: "Poetry as Enchantment". 20th anniversary issue of The Dark Horse, www.thedarkhorsemagazine.com. Summer 2015.

topic: 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

topic: 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

topic: Poetry, Bars, Use

The poetry from the eighteenth century was prose; the prose from the seventeenth century was poetry.

- David Hare

topic: 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

source: David Shields (2010). “Reality Hunger”, p.166, Vintage

topic: 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

source: Delmore Schwartz (1989). “Last & Lost Poems”, p.53, New Directions Publishing

topic: Morning, Poetry, Toads, Baudelaire

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

- Denis Diderot

topic: Poetry

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

- Denise Levertov

topic: 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

topic: Attitude, Moving, Poetry, New Attitude, New Words

Poetry is plucking at the heartstrings, and making music with them.

- Dennis Gabor

topic: Heart, Poetry, Poetry Is, Great Poet, Poetry By Poets

If you know what you are going to write when you're writing a poem, it's going to be average.

- Derek Walcott

topic: Writing, Average, Poetry

Poetry is road maintenance for a fragmented world which seeks to be kept together. It's been an integral activity for a long time.

Poetry examines an emotional truth. It's an experience filtered through the personality of the poet. We look to poetry for visions, not scientific truths. The poet's job is to combine new elements. Explore their melting, seeping into one another.

source: Diane Glancy (1996). “Claiming Breath”, p.28, U of Nebraska Press

topic: Long, Poetry, Together, Fragmented

Poetry saves what is human in this world going gaudy & insane. In exploring small truths, something larger might turn up, adding dimension, insight, vision, recognition to our lives. We just might be more complete, more aware after a poem.

source: Diane Glancy (1996). “Claiming Breath”, p.83, U of Nebraska Press

topic: Jobs, Emotional, Poetry

20th century poetry is a piÃ±ata. Images break from the earth when the poet strikes it.

source: Diane Glancy (1996). “Claiming Breath”, p.83, U of Nebraska Press

topic: Poetry, Vision, Insane, Gaudy

Poems come from incomplete knowledge.

topic: Poetry, Earth, Break

- Diane Wakoski

source: Diane Wakoski (1988). “Emerald Ice: Selected Poems, 1962-1987”, p.132, David R. Godine Publisher

topic: Poetry, Incomplete, Incomplete Knowledge

The poem, in a sense, is no more or less than a little machine for remembering itself ... Poetry is therefore primarily a commemorative act.

- Don Paterson

topic: Art, Poetry, Machines

So we start with an oversignifying reader. Those texts that appear to reward this reader for this additional investment - text that we find exceptionally suggestive, apposite, or musical - are usually adjudged to be 'poetic'. ... The work of the poet is to contribute a text that will firstly invite such a reading; and secondly reward such a reading.

- Don Paterson

topic: Art, Reading, Poetry

Poetry, unlike music, is a meta-art, and relies upon non-physical structures for the production of its effects. In its case, the medium is syntax, grammar and logical continuity, which together form the carrier-wave of plain sense within which its deeper meanings are broadcast.

- Don Paterson

topic: Art, Poetry, Together, Deeper Meaning

A poet dares be just so clear and no clearer... He unzips the veil from beauty, but does not remove it. A poet utterly clear is a trifle glaring.

- E. B. White

topic: Poetry, Doe, Veils

Well, write poetry, for God's sake, it's the only thing that matters.

- e. e. cummings

topic: Writing, Poetry, Matter

A poem is true if it hangs together. Information points to something else. A poem points to nothing but itself.

- E. M. Forster

topic: Poetry, Together, Literature

The essentials of poetry are rhythm, dance, and the human voice.

- Earle Birney

topic: Voice, Poetry, Essentials

Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words.

- Edgar Allan Poe

topic: Beauty, Thoughtful, Poetry, Poetry By Famous Poets, Great Poetry

With me poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion.

- Edgar Allan Poe

topic: Passion, Poetry, Purpose

Poetry and preaching do not go well together; when the preacher mounts the pulpit the poet usually goes away.

- Edith Hamilton

topic: Poetry, Together, Pulpit

The poet speaks to all men of that other life of theirs that they have smothered and forgotten.

Poetry is the deification of reality.

source: "The Beacon Book of Quotations by Women" by Rosalie Maggio, (p. 247), 1992.

topic: Men, Poetry, Speak

In the Augustan age ... poetry was ... the sister of architecture; with the romantics, and their heightened vowel-sense, resulting in different melodic lines, she became the sister of music; in the present day, she appears like the sister of horticulture, each poem growing according to the law of its own nature ...

topic: Art, Reality, Poetry

All great poetry is dipped in the dyes of the heart ...

topic: Law, Poetry, Age, Vowels, Horticulture

it is as unseeing to ask what is the use of poetry as it would be to ask what is the use of religion.

topic: Heart, Poetry, Great Poet

If certain critics and poetasters had their way, 'Ordinary Piety' and its child, Dullness, would be the masters of poetry.

topic: Poetry, Would Be, Use

I may say that I think greed about poetry is the only permissible greed - it is, indeed, unavoidable.

topic: Children, Poetry, Ordinary