Poet Quotes
-
Those things which make the infernal regions terrible, the darkness, the prison, the river of flaming fire, the judgment seat, are all a fable, with which the poets amuse themselves, and by them agitate us with vain terrors.
Seneca the Younger
-
Her pleasure in the walk must arise from the exercise and the day, from the view of the last smiles of the year upon the tawny leaves and withered hedges, and from repeating to herself some few of the thousand poetical descriptions extant of autumn-that season of peculiar and inexhaustible influence on the mind of taste and tenderness-that season which has drawn from every poet worthy of being read some attempt at description, or some lines of feeling.
Jane Austen
-
The deity on purpose [sings] the liveliest of all lyrics through the most miserable poet.
Plato
-
Black poet extraordinaire Langston Hughes provided a nuts-and-bolts blueprint in “Good Morning, Revolution,” 1934
Clara Fraser
-
As for the story, whether the poet takes it ready made or constructs it for himself, he should first sketch its general outline, and then fill in the episodes and amplify in detail.
Aristotle
-
Have big dreams but focus only on what you can control: your own thoughts, words and actions. This was Gandhi's way ... in the words of Buddhist poet Gary Snyder, our job is to move the world a millionth of an inch.
Eboo Patel
-
It was not the purpose of poetry to record anything and everything, to merely describe either the outer world or some subjective mood, but to speak from the imagination of the poet to the imagination of the reader.
Kathleen Raine
-
The poet can only write the poems; it takes the reader to complete the meaning.
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr.
-
Once a poet calls his myth a myth, he prevents the reader from treating it as a reality; we use the word "myth" only for stories we ourselves cannot believe.
Adam Kirsch
-
I have kind of an almost religious feeling about poets. I usually refuse to meet them because I admire them so much. Except for Poe.
Tony Kushner
-
Swiftly gliding in, blushing like a girl, a tall thin stripling held out both his hands; and although I could hardly believe as I looked at his flushed feminine, and artless face that it could be the Poet, I returned his warm pressure. After the ordinary greetings and courtesies he sat down and listened. I was silent from astonishment: was it possible that this mild-mannered beardless boy could be the veritable monster of the world?–ex-communicated by the Fathers of the Church, deprived of his civil rights by the fiat of a grim Lord Chancellor, discarded by every member of his family,and denounced by the rival sages of our literature as the founder of a Satanic school? I could not believe it; it must be a hoax.
Edward John Trelawny
-
Constantly risking absurdity and death whenever he performs above the heads of his audience, the poet, like an acrobat, climbs on rhyme to a high wire of his own making.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
