poetry quotes.docx

7/29/2019 Poetry Quotes.docx

1/10

Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.~Leonard Cohen

Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary. ~KahlilGibran

Ink runs from the corners of my mouthThere is no happiness like mine.I have been eating poetry.~Mark Strand, "Eating Poetry,"Reasons for Moving, 1968

There's no money in poetry, but then there's no poetry in money, either. ~RobertGraves, 1962 interview on BBC-TV, based on a very similar statement he overheardaround 1955

Poetry is what gets lost in translation. ~Robert Frost

Imaginary gardens with real toads in them. ~Marianne Moore's definition of poetry,"Poetry," Collected Poems, 1951

A poem is never finished, only abandoned. ~Paul Valry

"Most poems are never finished," (I was defensive). He sighed: "No, most poems arenever started." ~Dr. SunWolf

He who draws noble delights from sentiments of poetry is a true poet, though he hasnever written a line in all his life. ~George Sand, 1851

Always be a poet, even in prose. ~Charles Baudelaire, "My Heart Laid Bare,"IntimateJournals, 1864

Poets are soldiers that liberate words from the steadfast possession of definition. ~EliKhamarov, The Shadow Zone

Poetry is the journal of the sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air. Poetry isa search for syllables to shoot at the barriers of the unknown and the unknowable.Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away. ~CarlSandburg,Poetry Considered

Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted. ~Percy Shelley,ADefence of Poetry, 1821

Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history. ~Plato,Ion

Out of the quarrel with others we make rhetoric; out of the quarrel with ourselves wemake poetry. ~W.B. Yeats


2/10

Poetry is to philosophy what the Sabbath is to the rest of the week. ~Augustus WilliamHare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827

The distinction between historian and poet is not in the one writing prose and the other

verse... the one describes the thing that has been, and the other a kind of thing thatmight be. Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import thanhistory, since its statements are of the nature rather of universals, whereas those ofhistory are singulars. ~Aristotle, On Poetics

Poetry is a packsack of invisible keepsakes. ~Carl Sandburg

Poetry should... should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, andappear almost a remembrance. ~John Keats

A poet can survive everything but a misprint. ~Oscar Wilde

To see the Summer SkyIs Poetry, though never in a Book it lie -True Poems flee.~Emily Dickinson

The poet is in the end probably more afraid of the dogmatist who wants to extract themessage from the poem and throw the poem away than he is of the sentimentalist whosays, "Oh, just let me enjoy the poem." ~Robert Penn Warren, "The Themes of RobertFrost," Hopwood Lecture, 1947

A poem begins with a lump in the throat. ~Robert Frost

Poetry is the key to the hieroglyphics of Nature. ~Augustus William Hare and JuliusCharles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827

ever been kidnappedby a poetif i were a poeti'd kidnap youput you in my phrases and meter....~Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr., "kidnap poem"

Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. ~Percy Byshe Shelley

A prose writer gets tired of writing prose, and wants to be a poet. So he begins every linewith a capital letter, and keeps on writing prose. ~Samuel McChord Crothers, "EveryMan's Natural Desire to Be Somebody Else" The Dame School of Experience, 1920

Poetry is man's rebellion against being what he is. ~James Branch Cabell


3/10

A poet is an unhappy being whose heart is torn by secret sufferings, but whose lips areso strangely formed that when the sighs and the cries escape them, they sound likebeautiful music... and then people crowd about the poet and say to him: "Sing for ussoon again;" that is as much as to say, "May new sufferings torment your soul." ~SorenKierkegaard

"Therefore" is a word the poet must not know. ~Andr Gide

The poem is the point at which our strength gave out. ~Richard Rosen

It is the job of poetry to clean up our word-clogged reality by creating silences aroundthings. ~Stephen Mallarme

The true poet is all the time a visionary and whether with friends or not, as much aloneas a man on his death bed. ~W.B. Yeats

If the author had said "Let us put on appropriate galoshes," there could, of course, havebeen no poem. ~Author Unknown

Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason. ~Novalis

The smell of ink is intoxicating to me others may have wine, but I have poetry. ~TerriGuillemets

There is poetry as soon as we realize that we possess nothing. ~John Cage

Only the poet has any right to be sorry for the poor, if he has anything to spare when hehas thought of the dull, commonplace rich. ~William Bolitho

Who can tell the dancer from the dance? ~William Butler Yeats

Most painters have painted themselves. So have most poets: not so palpably indeed, butmore assiduously. Some have done nothing else. ~Augustus William Hare and JuliusCharles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827

Poetry is the language in which man explores his own amazement. ~Christopher Fry

If Galileo had said in verse that the world moved, the inquisition might have let himalone. ~Thomas Hardy

The poet doesn't invent. He listens. ~Jean Cocteau

Everything one invents is true, you may be perfectly sure of that. Poetry is as precise asgeometry. ~Gustave Flaubert

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


4/10

I am looking for a poem that says Everything so I don't have to write anymore.~Tukaram

The only problemwith Haiku is that you just

get started and then~Roger McGough

To have great poets there must be great audiences too. ~Walt Whitman

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

Perhaps no person can be a poet, or can even enjoy poetry, without a certainunsoundness of mind. ~Thomas Babington Macaulay

Poetry is the revelation of a feeling that the poet believes to be interior and personalwhich the reader recognizes as his own. ~Salvatore Quasimodo

You can't write poetry on the computer. ~Quentin Tarantino

Each man carries within him the soul of a poet who died young. ~Sainte-Beuve,Portraits littraires, 1862

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

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

You will find poetry nowhere unless you bring some of it with you. ~Joseph Joubert

God is the perfect poet. ~Robert Browning

Science is for those who learn; poetry, for those who know. ~Joseph Roux,Meditationsof a Parish Priest

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

The worst fate of a poet is to be admired without being understood. ~Jean Cocteau,LeRappel l'ordre, 1926

Poetry is life distilled. ~Gwendolyn Brooks

Poetry is thoughts that breathe, and words that burn. ~Thomas Gray


5/10

He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare notrealise. ~Oscar Wilde

Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.~Robert Frost

You don't have to suffer to be a poet. Adolescence is enough suffering for anyone.~John Ciardi,Simmons Review, Fall 1962

Poetry is all that is worth remembering in life. ~William Hazlitt

Poetry is the tunnel at the end of the light. ~J. Patrick Lewis,www.jpatricklewis.com

A poet's autobiography is his poetry. Anything else is just a footnote. ~YevgenyYentushenko, The Sole Survivor, 1982

If it doesn't work horizontally as prose...itprobablywon'tworkanybetterverticallypretendingtobepoetry.

~Robert Brault

A poem is true if it hangs together. Information points to something else. A poempoints to nothing but itself. ~E.M. Forster, Two Cheers for Democracy, 1951

Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood. ~T.S. Eliot,Dante, 1920

Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows. ~Edmund Burke

Poets are like baseball pitchers. Both have their moments. The intervals are the toughthings. ~Robert Frost

Poetry, like the moon, does not advertise anything. ~William Blissett

The poet sees things as they look. Is this having a faculty the less? or a sense the more?~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers,1827
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6/10

Happiness is sharing a bowl of cherries and a book of poetry with a shade tree. ~TerriGuillemets

Poetry is truth in its Sunday clothes. ~Author Unknown

Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting. ~Robert Frost

A poet looks at the world the way a man looks at a woman. ~Wallace Stevens,OpusPosthumous, 1957

Poetry is prose, bent out of shape. ~J. Patrick Lewis,www.jpatricklewis.com

Poetry is everywhere; it just needs editing. ~James Tate

We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because weare members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. Andmedicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustainlife. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. Dead Poet'sSociety

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not theexpression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only thosewho have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from thesethings. ~T.S. Eliot, Tradition and the Individual Talent, 1919

Each memorable verse of a true poet has two or three times the written content. ~Alfredde Musset,Le Pote dchu, 1839

Poetry is ordinary language raised to the nth power. Poetry is boned with ideas, nervedand blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words. ~PaulEngle,New York Times, 17 February 1957

I don't create poetry, I create myself, for me my poems are a way to me. ~EdithSdergran

There is as much difference between good poetry and fine verses, as between the smellof a flower-garden and of a perfumer's shop. ~Augustus William Hare and JuliusCharles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827

Mr Witwould: "Pray, madam, do you pin up your hair with all your letters? I find Imust keep copies."Mrs Millamant: "Only with those in verse.... I never pin up my hair with prose."~William Congreve, The Way of the World

I would as soon write free verse as play tennis with the net down. ~Robert Frost, 1935


7/10

A poet is a man who puts up a ladder to a star and climbs it while playing a violin.~Edmond de Goncourt

Poetry is not a civilizer, rather the reverse, for great poetry appeals to the most primitiveinstincts. ~Robinson Jeffers

He who writes prose builds his temple to Fame in rubble; he who writes verses builds itin granite. ~Edward Bulwer-Lytton

The word "Verse" is used here as the term most convenient for expressing, and withoutpedantry, all that is involved in the consideration of rhythm, rhyme, meter, andversification... the subject is exceedingly simple; one tenth of it, possibly may be calledethical; nine tenths, however, appertains to the mathematics. ~Edgar Allan Poe

A poet is a man who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to bestruck by lightning five or six times. ~Randall Jarrell

Poetry is perfect verbs hunting for elusive nouns. ~J. Patrick Lewis,

The poem... is a little myth of man's capacity of making life meaningful. And in the end,the poem is not a thing we see - it is, rather, a light by which we may see - and what wesee is life. ~Robert Penn Warren,Saturday Review, 22 March 1958

A poem should not meanBut be.~Archibald MacLeish,Ars Poetica, 1926

Your prayer can be poetry, and poetry can be your prayer. ~Terri Guillemets

The world is full of poetrythe airIs living with its spirit; and the wavesDance to the music of its melodies,And sparkle in its brightness.~James G. Percival

It is a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing ortalking about his art than he can by practicing it. ~W.H. Auden

Breathe-in experience,

breathe-out poetry.~Muriel Rukeyser, quoted inHighs by Alex J. Packer

I grew up in this town, my poetry was born between the hill and the river, it took itsvoice from the rain, and like the timber, it steeped itself in the forests. ~Pablo Neruda,quoted in Wall Street Journal,, 14 November 1985


8/10

Invariably pure and austere, poets mostlystarve to death embracing empty mountains,and when white clouds have no master,they just drift off, idle thoughts carefree.~Meng Chiao

Poetry is the impish attempt to paint the color of the wind. ~Maxwell Bodenheim

You can tear a poem apart to see what makes it tick.... You're back with the mystery ofhaving been moved by words. The best craftsmanship always leaves holes and gaps... sothat something that is notin the poem can creep, crawl, flash or thunder in. ~DylanThomas,Poetic Manifesto, 1961

Poetry is not always words. ~Terri Guillemets

Poets aren't very usefulBecause they aren't consumeful or very produceful.~Ogden Nash

If you got to talking to most cowboys, they'd admit they write 'em. I think some of themeanest, toughest sons of bitches around write poetry. ~Ross Knox

The desert attracts the nomad, the ocean the sailor, the infinite the poet. ~AuthorUnknown

You're not quite sure what it means but the words are so beautiful you know it must beprofound. ~Terri Guillemets

What is a Professor of Poetry? How can poetry be professed? ~W.H. Auden

Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It's that time of night, lying in bed,thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that's what the poetdoes. ~Allen Ginsberg

Sunshine cannot bleach the snow,Nor time unmake what poets know.~Ralph Waldo Emerson quotes

Children and lunatics cut the Gordian knot which the poet spends his life patiently

trying to untie. ~Jean Cocteau

If Rilke cut himself shaving, he would bleed poetry. ~Stephen Spender, about RainerMaria Rilke

Mathematics and Poetry are... the utterance of the same power of imagination, only thatin the one case it is addressed to the head, in the other, to the heart. ~Thomas Hill


9/10

The crown of literature is poetry. It is its end and aim. It is the sublimest activity of thehuman mind. It is the achievement of beauty and delicacy. The writer of prose can onlystep aside when the poet passes. ~W. Somerset Maugham

A true poet does not bother to be poetical. Nor does a nursery gardener scent his roses.

~Jean Cocteau

Everything in creation has its appointed painter or poet and remains in bondage like theprincess in the fairy tale 'til its appropriate liberator comes to set it free. ~Ralph WaldoEmerson

A poet must leave traces of his passage, not proof. ~Rene Char

[A poem] begins in delight and ends in wisdom. ~Robert Frost, "The Figure a PoemMakes," Collected Poems of Robert Frost, 1939

Poetry comes with anger, hunger and dismay; it does not often visit groups of citizenssitting down to be literary together, and would appal them if it did. ~ChristopherMorley,John Mistletoe

The poet, as everyone knows, must strike his individual note sometime between the agesof fifteen and twenty-five. He may hold it a long time, or a short time, but it is then thathe must strike it or never. School and college have been conducted with the almostexpress purpose of keeping him busy with something else till the danger of his evercreating anything is past. ~Robert Frost

A sold poem loses half its meaning. ~Terri Guillemets

Like butterflies in SpringPoetry awakens the Spirit,stirs the imagination and exploresthe possibilities with each stroke of its rhythmic wings.~Jamie Lynn Morris

[P]oets are masters of us ordinary men, in knowledge of the mind, because they drink atstreams which we have not yet made accessible to science. ~Sigmund Freud, quoted inA Dictionary of Scientific Quotations by Alan L. Mackay, 1991

Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words. ~Edgar Allan Poe

To be a poet is a condition, not a profession. ~Robert Frost

If Painting be Poetry's sister, she can only be a sister Anne, who will see nothing but aflock of sheep, while the other bodies forth a troop of dragoons with drawn sabres andwhite-plumed helmets. ~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses atTruth, by Two Brothers, 1827


10/10

Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits. ~Carl Sandburg

Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth. ~Samuel Johnson

Our poetry in the eighteenth century was prose; our prose in the seventeenth, poetry.

~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers,1827

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

The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth. ~Jean Cocteau

Publishing a volume of verse is like dropping a rose-petal down the Grand Canyon andwaiting for the echo. ~Don Marquis

Come voyeur my poemsFeel free, I feel free.~Carrie Latet

No poems can please for long or live that are written by water-drinkers. ~Horace(Quintus Horatius Flaccus),Satires

The poetry of the earth is never dead. ~John Keats

Poetry is frosted fire. ~J. Patrick Lewis,www.jpatricklewis.com

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

average. ~Derek Walcott

A poet dares be just so clear and no clearer.... He unzips the veil from beauty, but doesnot remove it. A poet utterly clear is a trifle glaring. ~E.B. White

The poet... may be used as a barometer, but let us not forget that he is also part of theweather. ~Lionel Trilling, The Liberal Imagination, 1950

If you've got a poem within you today, I can guarantee you a tomorrow. ~TerriGuillemets

Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful. ~Rita Dove

Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese. ~G.K. Chesterton

A poet's work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, startarguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep. ~Salman Rushdie

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

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