On Poetry Quotes

contemporary poetry is a kind of Reykjavik, a place where accessibility and intelligence have been fighting a Cold War by proxy for the last half-century.

This poetry. I never know what I'm going to say.

Works of art are of an infinite solitude, and no means of approach is so useless as criticism. Only love can touch and hold them and be fair to them.

Sometimes he did not know if he slept or just thought about sleep.

There is little premium in poetry in a world that thinks of Pound and Whitman as a weight and a sampler, not an Ezra, a Walt, a thing of beauty, a joy forever.

I don't want to go on being a root in the dark, vacillating, stretched out, shivering with sleep, downward, in the soaked guts of the earth, absorbing and thinking, eating each day.

Hope without love is hopeless.

Based on the law of probability Everything is possible because The sheer existence of possibility Confirms the existence Of impossibility.

When I want to be reminded of stupidity, especially my own, I turn on the TV.

I sang in my chains like the sea

And so sepúlchred in such pomp dost lie, That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.

In every sound, the hidden silence sleeps.

When there's music in your soul, there's soul in your music.

The ambitions are wake up, breathe, keep breathing.

When within yourself you find the road, the right road will open.

Poetry is partly sympathy, don't you think? If it's any good, it gets people to think about others' points of view.

Long ago we conquered our passions looking at ourselves in the mirror of eternity.

We're all just animals. That's all we are, and everything else is just an elaborate justification of our instincts. That's where music comes from. And romantic poetry. And bad novels.

My old teacher's definition of poetry is an attempt to understand.

Our most famous writers are Faulkner and Eudora Welty and Flannery O'Connor. It would make sense that the poetry would reflect some of those same values, some of the same techniques.

A poet's mission is to make words do more work than they normally do, to make them work on more than one level.

When shall I be dead and rid Of all the wrong my father did? How long, how long 'till spade and hearse Put to sleep my mother's curse?

If an ancient man saw planes two thousand years ago He would've thought they were birds Or angels from another world Or messengers from other planets.

I'm quite a softy, yes. I have a blank spot with respect to visual art, but I have perhaps a compensating hypersensitivity to poetry and music.

Poetry expands the senses and keeps them in prime condition. It keeps you aware of your nose, your eye, your ear, your tongue, your hand.

I enjoy poetry where I can talk as bizarre as I please, but theology or philosophy, I always respect the truth by taking it a step further.

Sprawled out on the front lawn Looking up at an ordinary sky It could fall on me and somehow be The day I didn't die

When magic through nerves and reason passes, Imagination, force, and passion will thunder. The portrait of the world is changed.

Valentine's Day is the poet's holiday.

Arrival in the world is really a departure and that, which we call departure, is only a return.

If it ain't a pleasure, it ain't a poem.

Not reading poetry amounts to a national pastime here.

Before verse can be human again it must learn to be brutal.

I don't really feel my poems are mine at all. I didn't create them out of nothing. I owe them to my relations with other people.

There is a time for reciting poems and a time for fists.

...you look at me like an emergency

Every one who has a heart, however ignorant of architecture he may be, feels the transcendent beauty and poetry of the mediaeval churches.

He will understand when it is too late that it is easier to love.

What you gain here, you lose on the other side.

To conquer fear, you must become fear.

From what you didn’t say, lies that you did say.

Life eats life to live.

Mathematics doesn’t care about those beyond the numbers.

You are the hybrids of golden worlds and ages splendidly conceived.

Death swallows death.

In the biggest and the smallest I sleep but at the same place I stay.

Sir, I admit your general rule, That every poet is a fool, But you yourself may serve to show it, That every fool is not a poet.

You are hurrying to the sweet place, To the nonsense chasing your spirit And in the nonsense you look for answers.

There is nobody to wake up eternal seekers.

And this that you call solitude is in fact a big crowd.