On Poetry Quotes
When I was asked to be Writer in Residence at Edinburgh I thought, you can't teach poetry. This is ridiculous.
For while the subjects of poetry are few and recurrent, the moods of man are infinitely various and unstable. It is the same in all arts.
The world is full of poetry. The air is living with its spirit; and the waves dance to the music of its melodies, and sparkle in its brightness.
This proves that great lyric poetry can die, be reborn, die again, but will always remain one of the most outstanding creations of the human soul.
Poetry is not an assertion of truth, but the making of that truth more fully real to us.
I'd always loved poetry and I'd always loved writing music and composing music, but I hadn't thought of putting the two together until around that time.
It is a function of poetry to locate those zones inside us that would be free, and declare them so.
Happiness is to take up the struggle in the midst of the raging storm and not to pluck the lute in the moonlight or recite poetry among the blossoms.
Poetry is the silence and speech between a wet struggling root of a flower and a sunlit blossom of that flower.
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.
Honest criticism and sensitive appreciation are directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry.
Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.
Painting or poetry is made as one makes love - a total embrace, prudence thrown to the winds, nothing held back.
I love the autumn for its sense of melancholy seems to strike my need for sadness. There is poetry in the dying of the year and mystery as well.
High and low culture come together in all Post Modern art, and American poetry is not excluded from this.
As for political poetry, as it's usually defined, it seems there's very little good political poetry.
The wheat field has ...poetry; it is like a memory of something one has once seen. We can only make our pictures speak.
Do I dare Disturb the universe? In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
Poetry is a good medium for revolutionary hope.
It is easy to see the glow but hard to recognize the awakening of silence.
Each star is a mirror reflecting the truth inside you.
Each poem leads you to the questions it makes sense to ask it.
Modern poetry, for me, began not in English at all but in Spanish, in the poems of Lorca.
The words ‘I Love You’ kill, and resurrect millions, in less than a second.
Poetry begins as the divine speech of the bicameral mind. Then, as the bicameral mind breaks down, there remain prophets.
Poetry's role is to provide spontaneous individual candor as distinct from manipulation and brainwash.
Why is it that all men who are outstanding in philosophy, poetry or the arts are melancholic?
The point of poetry is to be acutely discomforting, to prod and provoke, to poke us in the eye, to punch us in the nose, to knock us off our feet, to take our breath away.
Vowels are the most illuminated letters in the alphabet. Vowels are the colors and souls of poetry and speech. (1976 Penthouse interview)
If more politicians knew poetry, and more poets knew politics, I am convinced the world would be a little better place in which to live.
If there were no poetry on any day in the world, poetry would be invented that day. For there would be an intolerable hunger.
Take your materials from what is around you - if you see a dandelion, write about that; if it's misty, write about the mist. The materials for poetry are all about you in profusion.