POETRY QUOTES XII

quotations about poetry

My poetry had the same functional origin and the same formal configuration as teenage acne.

UMBERTO ECO

On Literature

Tags: Umberto Eco


Joy is a part of my process. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that poetry, as a practice, necessitates a sense of joy. It's exhilarating to come into contact with the things we write into being. And a real sense of play and abandon -- even when we are relying on hard-won technique, and even when the aim is deadly serious. How often do we get the excuse to stop, think, and then stop thinking altogether and try to listen to what sits behind our outside of our thoughts? Poets are lucky.

TRACY K. SMITH

interview, Ploughshares Literary Magazine, May 30, 2012

Tags: Tracy K. Smith


A poem is the very image of life expressed in its eternal truth. There is this difference between a story and a poem, that a story is a catalogue of detached facts, which have no other connexion than time, place, circumstance, cause and effect; the other is the creation of actions according to the unchangeable forms of human nature, as existing in the mind of the Creator, which is itself the image of all other minds. The one is partial, and applies only to a definite period of time, and a certain combination of events which can never again recur; the other is universal, and contains within itself the germ of a relation to whatever motives or actions have place in the possible varieties of human nature. Time, which destroys the beauty and the use of the story of particular facts, stripped of the poetry which should invest them, augments that of poetry, and for ever develops new and wonderful applications of the eternal truth which it contains. Hence epitomes have been called the moths of just history; they eat out the poetry of it. A story of particular facts is as a mirror which obscures and distorts that which should be beautiful: poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

A Defence of Poetry

Tags: Percy Bysshe Shelley


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

CHRISTIAN MORGENSTERN

Levels

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On our earth, before writing was invented, before the printing press was invented, poetry flourished. That is why we know that poetry is like bread; it should be shared by all, by scholars and by peasants, by all our vast, incredible, extraordinary family of humanity.

PABLO NERUDA

The Essential Neruda

Tags: Pablo Neruda


I know it must be incredibly important, this politics malarkey. It's the silver hand that sends the world spinning round on its axis: it doesn't take a degree from Cambridge to decipher that one out. Nonetheless, I can't help but feel very passionately that, deep down (dare I confess?) I simply care more about poetry.

JADE CUTTLE

"A plate of poetry, please: Is poetry more important than politics?", Varsity Online, May 3, 2016


Poetry ... wasn't written to be analyzed; it was meant to inspire without reason, to touch without understanding.

NICHOLAS SPARKS

The Notebook

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There is a sort of masonry in poetry, wherein the pause represents the joints of building; which ought in every line and course to have their dispositions varied.

WILLIAM SHENSTONE

Essays on Men and Manners


Poetry is the utterance of truth--deep, heartfelt truth. The true poet is very near the oracle.

E. H. CHAPIN

Living Words

Tags: E. H. Chapin


It's a perverse thing to be, or become, a poet, and always has been, given how starkly marginal a concern, relative to the larger culture, poetry is. Yet because of this, the stakes are incredibly high. There's no money in it, no fame, little chance of "relevancy." But there is glory.

COLIN BARRETT

"This Week in Fiction: Colin Barrett on Anhedonia and Writing Poetry", The New Yorker, April 11, 2016


Hark, his hands the lyre explore!
Bright-eyed Fancy, hov'ring o'er,
Scatters from her pictur'd urn
Thoughts that breathe, and words that burn.

THOMAS GRAY

The Poems

Tags: Thomas Gray


The difference between genuine poetry and the poetry of Dryden, Pope, and all their school, is briefly this: their poetry is conceived and composed in their wits, genuine poetry is conceived and composed in the soul.

MATTHEW ARNOLD

Essays in Criticism, Second Series

Tags: Matthew Arnold


Getting my poems published was a great achievement, but it didn't pay the rent. The only time I made any money was when I won a CAPS fellowship from the New York State Council on the Arts in 1983. They gathered sixteen poets in a room and handed us each a check for $5,000. The room was filled with happiness so thick you could cut it. Eventually, I started looking around for another way to make a living.

ELIZABETH ZELVIN

"Interview Questions and Answers", official website

Tags: Elizabeth Zelvin


Often it is a moment rather than an event that makes a poem.

TRACY K. SMITH

interview, Gulf Coast, vol. 17, number 1

Tags: Tracy K. Smith


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

ROBERT PENN WARREN

The New York Times, May 12, 1985

Tags: Robert Penn Warren


It is not in the power of every man or woman to be a poet, but all can cultivate a taste for it; and doing so tends to instruct the mind in what is refined and beautiful, heroic and elevating. Who could read "Paradise Lost" by that king of poets, Milton, without taking, for the time being at any rate, a flight towards heaven. Who could follow Camoens in his "Lusiad" without in imagination sailing through lovely isles covered with tropical foliage, and wafting spicy breezes through the fragrant air. Who that has read the unfortunate Fawkner's "Shipwreck," but has realized all the horrors of a water grave. Has Byron never led you to Greece, or Burns to the Ayrshire cotter's home? Have not the all-but inspired poems of that gifted Christian (all-but earthly saint), Heber, carried you as a missionary to "Afric's sunny fountains," or to the "Manger of Bethlehem?" Did Walter Scott never turn you for the time into a noble Scottish chieftain, or Longfellow into a North American Indian? Go to the poets when your mind is weary of the world, and there you will find rest.

T. AUGUSTUS FORBES LEITH

"On Cultivating a Taste for Poetry", Short Essays


What does it mean to be a great poet? It means that you wrote one or two great poems. Or great parts of poems. That's all it means. Don't try to picture the waste or it will alarm you.

NICHOLSON BAKER

The Anthologist

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You're a true poet: but, my dear,
If you would hold the public ear,
Remember to be not too clear.
Be strange, be verbally intense;
Words matter ten times more than sense;
In clear streams, under sunny skies,
The fish you angle for won't rise;
In turbid water, cloudy weather,
They'll rush to you by shoals together.

WILLIAM ALLINGHAM

"Advice to a Young Poet"

Tags: William Allingham


A poem deserves its title only inasmuch as it excites, by elevating the soul.

EDGAR ALLAN POE

"The Poetic Principle"

Tags: Edgar Allan Poe


Poets must, it seems to me, learn how to use a great many words before they can know how to use a few skilfully. Journalistic verbiage is not fluency.

MARSDEN HARTLEY

"The Business of Poetry"

Tags: Marsden Hartley