Poetry Quotes

"A life is not sufficiently elevated for poetry, unless, of course, the life has been made into an art."

"A lyric, it is true, is the expression of personal emotion, but then so is all poetry, and to suppose that there are several kinds of poetry, differing from each other in essence, is to be deceived by wholly artificial divisions which have no real being."

"A novel is a work of poetry. In order to write it, one must have tranquility of spirit and of impression."

"A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness."

"A poem in form still has to have voice, gesture, a sense of discovery, a metaphoric connection, as any poetry does."

"A poem is never finished, only abandoned."

"A poem is true if it hangs together. Information points to something else. A poem points to nothing but itself."

"A poet can survive everything but a misprint."

"A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds."

"A poet's work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep."

"A public expectation, it has to be said, not of poetry as such but of political positions variously approvable by mutually disapproving groups."

"A true poet does not bother to be poetical. Nor does a nursery gardener scent his roses."

"Alchemy is the art of far and near, and I think poetry is alchemy in that way. It's delightful to distort size, to see something that's tiny as though it were vast."

"All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling."

"All one's inventions are true, you can be sure of that. Poetry is as exact a science as geometry."

"All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry."

"Always be a poet, even in prose."

"American poetry, like American painting, is always personal with an emphasis on the individuality of the poet."

"Among the American contemporaries I read with most enjoyment are several North Carolinians. I think the best poetry being written these days is being written by Southerners."

"And at least in poetry you should feel free to lie. That is, not to lie, but to imagine what you want, to follow the direction of the poem."

"And New York is the most beautiful city in the world? It is not far from it. No urban night is like the night there... Squares after squares of flame, set up and cut into the aether. Here is our poetry, for we have pulled down the stars to our will."

"And there are a lot more people reading poetry, but there are not so many people reading an individual poet."

"And yet, in a culture like ours, which is given to material comforts, and addicted to forms of entertainment that offer immediate gratification, it is surprising that so much poetry is written."

"Anticipating that most poetry will be worse than carrying heavy luggage through O'Hare Airport, the public, to its loss, reads very little of it."

"Any long work in which poetry is persistent, be it epic or drama or narrative, is really a succession of separate poetic experiences governed into a related whole by an energy distinct from that which evoked them."

"Anybody serious about poetry knows how hard it is to achieve anything worthwhile in it."

"Art works because it appeals to certain faculties of the mind. Music depends on details of the auditory system, painting and sculpture on the visual system. Poetry and literature depend on language."

"Art: If the object of poetry is, to make men, then poetry is the heir of prophecy."

"As things are, and as fundamentally they must always be, poetry is not a career, but a mug's game. No honest poet can ever feel quite sure of the permanent value of what he has written: He may have wasted his time and messed up his life for nothing."

"Because, in fact, women, feminists, do read my poetry, and they read it often with the power of their political interpretation. I don't care; that's what poetry is supposed to do."

"But for me, being an editor I've been an editor of all kinds of books being an editor of poetry has been the way in which I could give a crucial part of my time to what I love most."

"But I am not political in the current events sense, and I have never wanted anyone to read my poetry that way."

"But I don't think that poetry is a good, to use a contemporary word, venue, for current events."

"But in the finished art of the song the use of words has no connection with the use of words in poetry."

"But poetry is my life. Poetry is what matters to me."

"Colloquial poetry is to the real art as the barber's wax dummy is to sculpture."

"Dancing is the poetry of the foot."

"Dealing with poetry is a daunting task, simply because the reason one does it as an editor at all is because one is constantly coming to terms with one's own understanding of how to understand the world."

"Distinctly American poetry is usually written in the context of one's geographic landscape, sometimes out of one's cultural myths, and often with reference to gender and race or ethnic origins."

"Drawing is a way of coming upon the connection between things, just like metaphor in poetry reconnects what has become separated."

"Eloquence is the poetry of prose."

"Every American poet feels that the whole responsibility for contemporary poetry has fallen upon his shoulders, that he is a literary aristocracy of one."

"Every now and then I read a poem that does touch something in me, but I never turn to poetry for solace or pleasure in the way that I throw myself into prose."

"Every single soul is a poem."

"Every so often I find some poems that are too good for the readers of The Atlantic because they are a little too involved with the nature of poetry, as such."

"Everything one invents is true, you may be perfectly sure of that. Poetry is as precise as geometry."

"Few rappers realize the genre sprang from West African griots through Delta slave songs to jazz poetry and the comedic trash talk of 'the dozens.'"