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

• 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

• 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

• If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for the Creator, there is no poverty.

  

  Rainer Maria Rilke
  • Life
  • Poetry
  • Poverty

• The Scottish Highlands are incredible. There seems to be magic and poetry everywhere.

  

  Caitriona Balfe
  • Poetry
  • Magic
  • Seems

• There are several more careers more engaging to follow than that of poetry. But the circumstances of one's birth, the conduct of one's parents, the current economic structure of society, and a thousand other local factors have as much or more to say about successions to such occupations, the naive volitions of the poet to the contrary.

  

  Hart Crane
  • Society
  • Poetry
  • Circumstances

• You are not my nursemaid. Remember, I am rescuing you.

  

  Robin LaFevers
  • Remember
  • Nurse

• Bonobos are unique among great apes because they are not dominated by males.

  

  Claudine Andre
  • Males
  • Dominated
  • Apes

• We are Seth, and whenever we have spoken we have been known as Seth. The entity had its beginning before the emergence of your time. It was instrumental, with many other entities, in the early formation of energy into physical form. We are not alone in this endeavor, for through your centuries other entities like us have also appeared and spoken.

  

  Jane Roberts
  • Time
  • Energy
  • Alone

• People are terrified. A lot of them are in relationships that aren't satisfying, and if you tell them they can change their life, they get really scared.

  

  Erica Jong
  • People
  • Scared
  • Satisfying

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

  

  Joseph Brodsky
  • Poetry