On Poetry Quotes

Voices and movements approach loss and remembrance profoundly, making poetry of the mundane and seasoning it with wit.

In poetry you can leave out everything but the truth.

Peculiar as I was, and remain, I was trained to be practical. I'm still amazed at the radical temerity of my friends, you included, Julie, who choose poetry as their vocation. I envy your faith.

Poetry, for me, conveys the essence of narrative rather than its particulars.

Poetry absolves spirituality from the dividedness of religions and provides us with a sanctuary that excludes no one.

I was a serious poet for quite a while and had little notebooks filled with poetry.

Unlike Woody Allen, I would be happy to be part of any (poetry) club that would have me.

After my marriage ended, I had an urge to skip that part of my life completely in terms of poetry, not publish anything at all about it.

I started wanting desperately to say something, to make a point, to be heard - and I still feel that way. Free verse served me best when I embarked on poetry.

Poetry isn't an activity, it's a way life is lived.

We have the words in our pockets, obscure directions. The old ones have taken away the light of their presence.

Two girls discover the secret of life in a sudden line of poetry.

Poetry teaches us how to live in a world in which none of us belongs.

Longfellow is to poetry what the barrel-organ is to music.

I feel that at any stage of my literary career it could have been said that the last book contained all the others.

Americans are not brought up with meter. They're not brought up with poetry. If you try to get them to recite, they're too embarrassed.

Consider the difference between the first and third person in poetry [...] It's like the difference between looking at a person and looking through their eyes.

For Mallarmé naming an object meant suppressing three-quarters of its poetic pleasure (which consists in the joy of guessing bit by bit - "le suggérer, voilà le rêve!").

Poetry is one of the essential structures of civilization - carrying myth, ritual, 'tales of the tribe' and the essence of language.

I think that's what poetry does. It allows people to come together and identify with a common thing that is outside of themselves, but which they identify with from the interior.

Poems come from incomplete knowledge.

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

All poets write bad poetry. Bad poets publish them, good poets burn them.

PC stuff just lowers the general acceptance of good work and replaces it with bogus poetry that celebrates values that in themselves are probably quite worthy.

We were clever enough to turn a laundry list into poetry.

Poetry can be the bridge, the crossover point in the mind between the physical and the spiritual. A place where the two can meet.

I feel deep gratitude for the life poetry has allowed me to live. I know the life I could have lived without it. Both on the physical plain, and the soul plain. Poetry helps us endure.

I would say my life experiences are my poetry, whether I'm writing about those actual, factual experiences or not.

That's a rather flippant quote "drinking and writing bad poetry" from me. I mean, I said it, but I was doing other stuff too. I certainly didn't manage the full stretch of four years.

Poetry says the things that I can't say. I read a lot, but I never write it.

My father had wanted to name me for Dylan Thomas. He had seen him speak on one of those drunken poetry tours he did.

England still waits for the supreme moment of her literature--for the great poet who shall voice her, or, better still, for the thousand little poets whose voices shall pass into our common talk.

Poetry is a peerless proficiency of the imagination.

Eloquence is heard; poetry is overheard ... All poetry is of the nature of the soliloquy.

I began writing poetry when I was about 10. Bad poetry, but you start with bad poetry.

Poetry is not only the most concise way of conveying the human experience; it also offers the highest possible standards for any linguistic operation.

A mind that is lively and inquiring, compassionate, curious, angry, full of music, full of feeling, is a mind full of possible poetry.

I grew up in a sad, depressed place. I got out. Poetry saved my life.

The language of poetry is not stuck in place. Nothing can own language. I think, however, the genre of poetry itself is very feminine and motherly.

The romanticised life, where all the great poetry and music and art of the world comes from, is great but it requires a lot of self-indulgence.

Poetry is a sleep-maker for that which sits up late in us listening for the footfall of the future on to-day's doorstep.

I believe the best poetry of our times is growing too artistic; the study is too visible. If freedom and naturalness are lost out of poetry, everything worth having is lost.

poetry is where the language is renewed.

Yes, the mistrust of poetry has a long history, for a variety of reasons, but they all come down to sentiment and invention over fact and truth. Figurative language is suspicious.

I feel that the task of criticizing my poetry is best left to others (i.e. critics) and would much rather have it take place after I am dead. If at all.

While some mothers sing lullabies to their children, my mother read me poetry. And to this day, I associate my strongest and most insistent feelings with words lyrically organized on a page.

Although I was calm as a child, I had this restlessness about me–this need and hunger to create my own world. Poetry filled that void, and its words fed that vital necessity of ownership.

"Confessional poetry" is another one of those labels. It goes in and out of fashion.

All my closest friends came to me through poetry. My wife, too! Other than my family, poetry is the gravitational force of my life.

I'm an actress, primarily. I love to write poetry. I've been writing poetry since I was 12 years old.