On Poetry Quotes

The strongest part of a religion today is its unconscious poetry

This, in the end, might be the greatest social good of poetry: to get us to live differently, with a different sort of thinking and concentration, even if it's just for a few moments.

I don't know if anyone has ever mentioned this, we need to be careful with drugs! They're not just all fun and games! And of course poetry would be immeasurably worse without humor.

Poetry can't cure cancer, but it can save your life until you die.

Not philosophy, after all, not humanity, just sheer joyous power of song, is the primal thing in poetry.

By its very looseness, by its way of evoking rather than defining, suggesting rather than saying, English is a magnificent vehicle for emotional poetry.

Poetry finds its perilous equilibrium somewhere between music and speech.

poetry is first of all a way of life and only secondarily a way of writing.

I cannot understand why poetry is not taught at schools as a way of seeing, a quick, untiring path to essentials.

One of the springs of poetry is joy.

Poetry has a way of teaching one what one needs to know ... if one is honest.

In poetry compromise is fatal. In action of any cooperative sort it is inevitable. The thing is to find the balance.

Why should it happen that among the great many women whom I see and am fond of, suddenly somebody I meet for half an hour opens the door into poetry?

Go rich in poverty. Go rich in poetry. This nothingness is plentitude.

I feel often very close to the ecstasy and anguish which lie at the very heart of poetry - I am writing a lot.

Poetry helps my soul escape its encasement.

I used to write stories and poetry, but for some reason I have it in my head that if I'm going to write, I have to write a script.

The gap between verse and poetry is enormous. Between good poetry and good prose the gap is much narrower

I never wrote poetry, just prose. I don't really consider songwriting a form of poetry either. The words are important, of course, but they're dependent on the music.

I love poetry, read it a lot, but make no claim to being able to write it.

The idea that language can be recombined to create new forms, new things, is of course very old in poetry.

I'm not the kind of poet who arranges treasure-hunts to please the academics and keep them busy. Poetry should be surprising in deeper ways.

I'm not against ambition and reach, but if you can say it in four lines, why waste your time saying it in more? Challenge the world by all means, but it's bad for your poetry to take steroids.

And truly Philosophy is but sophisticated poetry. Whence do those ancient writers derive all their authority but from the poets?

Solitude is an essential element of poetry.

I've written some poetry, but...songs have to be more poetic, and I've really gotten to this non-poetic sort of writing.

All poetry is political, to some degree.

If anxiety is the major force of our contemporary condition, a lot of poetry - including my own, mostly - sort of tries to escape that, fly off into magical thinking or bewilderment or whatever.

I think no matter how snarky you try to be, poetry will always find a way to make a spiritual goal out of what you're doing.

Poetry is a way of always paying attention to the world for me; a way of letting the world stick to me instead of being anxious or estranged, just being present in the world.

Poetry is fascinating. As soon as it begins the poetry has changed the thing into something extra, and somehow prose can go over into poetry.

Time has nothing to do with the matter.

One can be well-bred and write bad poetry

The demand that poetry be immediately understandable to everyone is truly absurd.

Poetry is, above all, an approach to the truth of feeling.

Our culture is our strength be it music, dance, poetry or anything, and these are very precious.

Poems are taught as though the poet has put a secret key in his words and it is the reader's job to find it. Poems are not mystery novels.

Lovers needn't always agree, anymore than poetry need always rhyme.

Another power I don't have," said Lissa ruefully. I grinned. "Hey, I have yet to meet any spirit user who can throw a punch like you can. That was poetry in motion, Liss." She groaned.

Let me read you some of my poetry. My poetry just takes me to another level.

I think poetry is best read to oneself.

I like to move around in the landscape between poetry and prose, between the lyrical and the narrative.

Poetry connects you to yourself, to the self that doesn't know how to talk or negotiate.

Prose poetry is not set to a melody or music so there's something freeing about it.

I write poetry. It comes naturally to me, but from a technical point of view it forces me to pay close attention to language and to scan.

We saw a hole in the Chicago poetry scene that slam couldn't fill. I think a lot more can be done with the form than just competition.

Poetry is the eloquence of verse.

There is no hierarchy in Japanese Buddhist poetry.

Some people can't go into church any longer to feel this longing, but they still have the longing, so what do they do? Well, one thing you can do is what people do in prison; they turn to poetry.

I wanted to spend all my time writing poetry. But when I had children I couldn't do that anymore.