Joseph Brodsky Quotes

Anyone who regards poetry as an entertainment, as a 'read,' commits an anthropological crime, in the first place against himself.

Joseph Brodsky

• Poetry

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Quotes to Explore

• I've been writing a lot of poetry recently. It helps me think and work things out.

  

  Ed Westwick
  • Work
  • Writing
  • Poetry

• I want to prove that if you write in strict meter and rhyme about subjects people care about, they will buy poetry.

  

  Felix Dennis
  • People
  • Care
  • Poetry

• For awhile after you quit Keats all other poetry seems to be only whistling or humming.

  

  F. Scott Fitzgerald
  • You
  • Poetry
  • Quit

• Poetry, I think, intensifies the reader's experience. If it's a humorous facet of the story, poetry makes it more exuberant. If it's a sad facet, poetry can make it more poignant.

  

  Vikram Seth
  • Experience
  • Poetry
  • Sad

• I think poetry's always a kind of faith. It is the kind that I have.

  

  Natasha Trethewey
  • Think
  • Faith
  • Poetry

• I grew up in this town, my poetry was born between the hill and the river, it took its voice from the rain, and like the timber, it steeped itself in the forests.

  

  Pablo Neruda
  • Up
  • Poetry
  • Rain

• A poet's autobiography is his poetry. Anything else is just a footnote.

  

  Yevgeny Yevtushenko
  • Poetry
  • Poet
  • Anything

• When I first stepped into literature twenty-five years ago, I wanted to work on behalf of the oppressed, the working masses, and it seemed to me, mistakenly, that I would not find them among the Jews.

  

  S. Ansky
  • Work
  • Literature
  • Jews

• I like the beauty of Faulkner's poetry. But I don't like his themes, not at all.

  

  Manuel Puig
  • Poetry
  • Beauty
  • Themes

• My fashion statement depends on my mood. I am more of a tomboy when dressing up, and I have never worn pink in my entire life.

  

  Lalaine Vergara-Paras
  • Life
  • Fashion
  • Mood

• If I'm feeling desperate, I'll go out image-hunting. I'll go to news agents and stand at the rack flicking through magazines or go to second-hand bookshops. And then, bit by bit, like concrete poetry, I start to realise that I am drawn to particular things, and then I start wondering why that is.

  

  Gary Hume
  • Poetry
  • Hunting
  • Desperate

• Such discussions help us very little to enjoy what has been well done in art or poetry, to discriminate between what is more and what is less excellent in them, or to use words like beauty, excellence, art, poetry, with a more precise meaning than they would otherwise have.

  

  Walter Pater
  • Done
  • Art
  • Help

• Poetry, whatever the manifest content of the poem, is always a violation of the rationalism and morality of bourgeois society.

  

  Octavio Paz
  • Society
  • Poetry
  • Morality

• Well, probably I was fed up with concrete poetry. There was a lot of bad concrete poetry and besides, it was confused with visual poetry which was completely different.

  

  Ian Hamilton Finlay
  • Up
  • Different
  • Bad

• Poetry is a form of mathematics, a highly rigorous relationship with words.

  

  Tahar Ben Jelloun
  • Words
  • Relationship
  • Poetry

• Poetry is the experience of liberty. The poet risks himself, chances all on the poem's all with each verse he writes.

  

  Octavio Paz
  • Experience
  • Poetry
  • Risks

• Poetry is the elder sister of history, the mother of language, the ancestress of civilization.

  

  Orson F. Whitney
  • History
  • Mother
  • Poetry

• I found that it wasn't so oddball to like music and poetry and visual arts, they're kindred spirits.

  

  J. Carter Brown
  • Music
  • Poetry
  • Arts

• I enjoy listening to contemporary rock on the college stations while I'm taking long walks, love gospel and soul music, am fascinated by hip-hop and rap as the new kind of urban 'beat' poetry and, come to think of it, find something interesting about just any kind of music.

  

  Oscar Hijuelos
  • Music
  • Long
  • Love

• Poetry can do a lot of things to people. I mean it can improve your imagination. It can take you to new places. It can give you this incredible form of verbal pleasure.

  

  Billy Collins
  • People
  • Imagination
  • Poetry

• Poetry isn't a profession, it's a way of life. It's an empty basket; you put your life into it and make something out of that.

  

  Mary Oliver
  • Life
  • Poetry

• I was hoping, actually, that being on the other side of the camera in a scary movie, see how it's filmed and maybe you won't be as scared next time you watch one... didn't really work out! Because I know it's fake, but I just get so into it.

  

  Taissa Farmiga
  • Time
  • Work
  • Movie

• Just as a mother finds pleasure in taking her little child on her lap, there to feed and caress him, in like manner our loving God shows His fondness for His beloved souls who have given themselves entirely to Him and have placed all their hope in His goodness.

  

  Alphonsus Liguori
  • God
  • Mother
  • Hope

• Anyone who regards poetry as an entertainment, as a 'read,' commits an anthropological crime, in the first place against himself.

  

  Joseph Brodsky
  • Poetry