On Poetry Quotes

it is as unseeing to ask what is the use of poetry as it would be to ask what is the use of religion.

Poetry and art are the breath of life to her.

Most changes in music, most exciting things that happen in music, occur through a miscommunication between people "I thought you said this." Poetry comes out of that too.

She is unable to dream, think or love. In a woman, poetry never comes naturally, but always as the result of education. Only the woman of the world is a woman; the rest are simply females.

Unhappie Verse, the witnesse of my unhappie state, Make thy selfe fluttring wings of thy fast flying Thought

Despair leads to boredom, electronic games, computer hacking, poetry and other bad habits.

Poetry -- even bad poetry -- may be our final hope.

In writing, fidelity to fact leads eventually to the poetry of truth.

I believe that there is a kind of poetry, even a kind of truth, in simple fact.

He says his aim is poetry. One does not aim at poetry with pistols. At poets, perhaps.

You're alone with yourself and your own feelings and that gives you deeper access to what you need to get in touch with to write poetry.

And when you are entering into poetry, whatever stage you're at, you are participating in something with a very long and noble tradition.

Now, the process of writing poetry is very messy. Not systematic, never quite the same

I have tried to remember throughout that poetry is made by flesh-and-blood human beings. It is a bloody art. It lives on a human scale and thrives when it is passed from hand to hand.

The poet wants justice. And the poet wants art. In poetry we can't have one without the other.

And a lot of poetry is putting yourself back into the state of wonder that you have before things when you're a child. It's not only a joyous wonder, it's sometimes a grief stricken wonder.

The attention deficit disorder of the culture is very distressing in America now and I think it puts a lot of things at risk, not just poetry.

There's been no poet, no great poet in the history of poetry who hasn't also been a great reader of poetry. This is sometimes distressing to my students when I tell them this.

But, that was the beginning, though I didn't start writing until I was in high school and when I was in high school I really began to write poetry with great energy and enthusiasm.

I think it's one of the things that drive lyric poetry, our sense of mortality.

I think fiction goes to poetry for the intensity of its use of language.

I would be happier if people who went through MFA programs also were already, by then, deeply committed readers of poetry because we need readers of poetry as much as writers of poetry.

I think it's true that that's something that poetry can go to school on fiction. I think poetry can go to fiction to learn.

A stress on the system and I think a painful thing for many young poets who are looking to find a life in poetry that they're not going to be able to find.

I think one of the things that distinguished my work from the beginning when I was in college was my turning towards poetry from other countries.

A certain kind of poetry looks back at experience from an older perspective.

I don't think poetry will die, but I think that poetry does demand a certain kind of attention to language.

think what you hope for is that at different times of your life you're able to write the poetry that reflects the moment that you're in on your own journey.

Poetry is engendered in solitude, so what better meter for it than the clip of a buckskin horse?

Mathematics is an activity governed by the same rules imposed upon the symphonies of Beethoven, the paintings of DaVinci, and the poetry of Homer.

Truth is poetry; it is the grandest poetry.

Sometimes you get lit students that know a lot about the canon but virtually nothing about contemporary poetry and vice versa. I like to mix things up.

In order for poetry to exist there has to be not-poetry to contrast it with.

A person born with an instinct for poverty.

People in power tend to find poetry dangerous to them because it is dislocating, they can't catch it, can't control it. They prefer coherence, what's blunt and has clarity.

I try to see their moral relevance [in the Bible] and, of course, to admire the literary beauty of the text. Prophetic poetry: No one has written the way Isaiah does.

Poetry is another space, like love, where we extend that extra credit to the writer.

You can't be wrong in journalism. Take a wrong turn in journalism, and you are writing fiction. You can take a wrong turn in poetry, and something wonderful can happen.

I think most good poetry is about suffering; I think that's what underlies the love in these landays pieces - suffering and longing.

Poetry allows me to write about what I don't know, whereas journalism demands a higher level of certainty to be worthy of being written.

In most of the world, poetry has such a different reputation than it does in Western culture.

Poetry isn't as relevant in the Western world as it is in Afghanistan. And not many people make time for something that doesn't feel relevant.

News isn't designed to talk about daily life in its nuances, but poetry is.

We can't separate our humanity from our poetry.

The critics could never mortify me out of heart - because I love poetry for its own sake, - and, tho' with no stoicism and some ambition, care more for my poems than for my poetic reputation.

To the sun Rome owes its underlying glow, and its air called golden - to me, more the yellow of white wine; like wine it raises agreeability to poetry.

the four virtues a person needs in order to be safe and happy in life: intelligence, friendship, strength and (I love this one) poetry.

Though we do not have many poets, we certainly have more than we deserve, for we deserve none at all. It is ourselves that we are hurting by our stupidity and ignorance of poetry.

Oh, I wish I organized my books. But I don't. I'm not an organized person. The best I can do is put the books I really like in one sort of general area, and poetry in another.

Why do comparisons of words and tone poems (poetry and music) never take into consideration that the word is a mere signifier, but that the sound, aside from being a signifier, is also an object?