On Poetry Quotes

There are two ways of disliking poetry, one way is to dislike it, the other is to read Pope.

Who can ever say the perfect thing to the poet about his poetry?

Women who are inclined to write poetry at all are inspired by being mad at something.

The poet is the supreme artist, for he is the master of colour and of form, and the real musician besides, and is lord over all life and all arts.

Why has our poetry eschewed The rapture and response of food? What hymns are sung, what praises said For home-made miracles of bread?

It ["The Ancient Mariner"] is marvellous in its mastery over that delightfully fortuitous inconsequence that is the adamantine logic of dreamland.

The flavor of wine is like delicate poetry.

Poetry is a kind of magic that very few can create and even fewer can truly understand and appreciate in all its glory.

I see no reason for calling my work poetry except that there is no other category in which to put it.

Poetry's unnat'ral; no man ever talked poetry 'cept a beadle on boxin' day.

Eroticism cannot be entirely revealed without poetry.

And what is the very essence of poetry if it is not this 'metaphorical language'-this marking of the before unapprehended relations of things?

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

It's always good when women win things in fiction because it tends to be more male-dominated, unlike poetry, which is more equal

When in public poetry should take off its clothes and wave to the nearest person in sight; it should be seen in the company of thieves and lovers rather than that of journalists and publishers.

On the meridian of time, there is no injustice: there is only the poetry of motion creating the illusion of truth and drama.

Part of the strength of Pollock and Rothko's art, in fact, is this doubt as to whether art may be there at all.

Poetry is to hold judgment on your soul.

Some poets marry a language; some have affairs with it; some treat it as a parent, some as a child, some as an equal, or as a friend.

Art itself, in all its methods, is the child of religion. The highest and best works in architecture, sculpture and painting, poetry and music, have been born out of the religion of Nature.

Yet, it is true, poetry is delicious; the best prose is that which is most full of poetry.

Poetry is the dark side of the moon.

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

If our goal is to write poetry, the only way we are likely to be any good is to try to be as great as the best.

If the poet wants to be a poet, the poet must force the poet to revise. If the poet doesn't wish to revise, let the poet abandon poetry and take up stamp-collecting or real estate.

And the second question, can poetry be taught? I didn't think so.

The idea of a detached art, of poetry as a charm which exists only to distract our leisure, is a decadent idea and an unmistakable symptom of our power to castrate.

Freedom is slavery some poets tell us. Enslave yourself to the right leader's truth, Christ's or Karl Marx', and it will set you free.

For what I have publish'd, I can only hope to be pardon'd; but for what I have burned, I deserve to be prais'd.

Everything is complicated; if that were not so, life and poetry and everything else would be a bore.

I know that poetry is indispensable, but to what I could not say.

Theatre is poetry that rises from the book and becomes human enough to talk and shout, weep and despair

Photography is an austere and blazing poetry of the real.

I've inherited the bad poetry genes, but not the inventor genes.

Myth and poetry represent a reservoir of vertical thinking, which we could also call longing and gratitude to ancestors. We need that gratitude desperately.

Out of the ruined lodge and forgotten mansion, bowers that are trodden under foot, and pleasure-houses that are dust, the poet calls up a palingenesis.

Kierkegaard was once asked, 'What is a poet?' He answered that a poet was an unhappy man whose moans and cries of anguish were transformed into ravishing music.

When something is too beautiful or too terrible or even too funny for words, then it is time for poetry.

Poetry is the art of overhearing ourselves say things from which it is impossible to retreat.

That's one of the great things about poetry; one realises that one does one's little turn - that you're just part of the great crop, as it were.

She stood upon a continent of ice, which sparkled between sea and sky, endless and dazzling, as though the world kept all its treasure there; a scale which balanced poetry and prayer.

All good poetry is forged slowly and patiently, link by link, with sweat and blood and tears.

We are able to feel and learn very quickly through music, through art, through poetry some spiritual things that we would otherwise learn very slowly.

Here is our poetry, for we have pulled down the stars to our will.

Poetry is halfway between prose and music: it is sometimes like an intimate conversation, in words and phrases which need not be fully uttered, and sometimes like dancing and wordless music.

Writers quite often starve. And I'm mainly just writing critical prose and poetry, that's a formula for starvation.

Gene Wolfe has produced a work of art that can satisfy adult appetites and in which even the most fantastical elements register as poetry rather than as penny-whistle whimsy.

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

I don't know if you actually get something out of writing poetry. I think poetry is an autonomous muse that decides to come and sit on your couch.

Law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.