On Poetry Quotes

Poetry is a verdict rather than an intention.

The poetic myths are dead; and the poetic image, which is the myth of the individual, reigns in their stead.

I'm coming from journalism, but at the same time I'm tempted by poetry, politics, and maybe the idea of being a witness, a belief that you can still change things with the image.

And I or you pocketless of a dime, may purchase the pick of the earth.

All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling. To be natural is to be obvious, and to be obvious is to be inartistic.

I've given offense by saying I'd as soon write free verse as play tennis with the net down.

If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.

A man of eighty has outlived probably three new schools of painting, two of architecture and poetry and a hundred in dress.

We ran as if to meet the moon.

Literature is not a picture of life, but is a separate experience with its own kind of flow and enhancement.

Love is almost never simple.

Wrong solitude vinegars the soul, right solitude oils it.

I found that it wasn't so oddball to like music and poetry and visual arts, they're kindred spirits.

There are certain things in which mediocrity is not to be endured, such as poetry, music, painting, public speaking.

Poetry, like jazz, is one of those dazzling diamonds of creative industry that help human beings make sense out of the comedies and tragedies that contextualize our lives.

Life is only a flicker of melted ice.

Love is a shadow. How you lie and cry after it

Do not look too far for you will see nothing.

It's important to have your private enjoyments because sometimes that's all we have.

Even when poetry has a meaning, as it usually has, it may be inadvisable to draw it out. Perfect understanding will sometimes almost extinguish pleasure.

Trying too hard to be too good, even when trying to be bad, is too good for the bad, too bad for the good.

Either you will be you or you will not be at all.

Those who hate rain hate life.

Nothing reminds us of an awakening more than rain.

Creating means living.

If food is poetry, is not poetry also food?

To say more while saying less is the secret of being simple.

Strangers are endearing because you don’t know them yet.

Always our wars have been our confessions of weakness

The Mississippi and its paddle boats, and the rivers of Bengal and their gleaming steamers evoked a similar atmosphere of romance, of long, song-filled voyages, high winds and lonely sunsets.

At the edge of madness you howl diamonds and pearls.

The wind is the moon's imagination wandering.

Who you are contributes to your poetry in a number of important ways, but you shouldn't identify with your poems so closely that when they are cut, you're the one that bleeds.

Poetry and art nourish the soul of the world with the flavor-filled substances of beauty, wisdom and truth.

Poetry is the communication through words of certain experiences that can be communicated in no other way.

It is vain futility to analyze the algebra of time.

To keep the air fresh among words is the secret of verbal cleanliness.

Everyone should be forcibly transplanted to another continent from their family at the age of three.

The deeper thought is, the taller it becomes.

By daily dying, I have come to be.

There have been two popular subjects for poetry in the last few decades: the Vietnam War and AIDS, about both of which almost all of us have felt deeply.

To leave out beautiful sunsets is the secret of good taste.

Poets sing our human music for us.

There's two kinds of women--those you write poems about and those you don't.

We are spirits clad in veils.

I learned a world from each / one whom I loved

Love is a clash of lightnings

Nothing is part of everything.

Beyond all vanities, fights, and desires, omnipotent silence lies.

Mathematics is, as it were, a sensuous logic, and relates to philosophy as do the arts, music, and plastic art to poetry.