Poem Quotes
-
I believe every space and comma is a living part of the poem and has its function, just as every muscle and pore of the body has its function. And the way the lines are broken is a functioning part essential to the life of the poem.
Denise Levertov
-
Writing a poem is discovering.
Robert Frost
-
If poets often commit suicide, it is not because their poems are bad but because they are good. Whoever heard of a bad poet committing suicide? The reader is only a little better off. The exhilaration of a good poem lasts twenty minutes, an hour at most. Unlike the scientist, the artist has reentry problems that are frequent and catastrophic.
Walker Percy
-
And from then on, I bathed in the Poem of the Sea, star-infused, and opalescent, devouring green azures.
Arthur Rimbaud
-
We know the particular poem, not what it says that we can restate.
Allen Tate
-
There are three things, after all, that a poem must reach: the eye, the ear, and what we may call the heart or the mind. It is the most important of all to reach the heart of the reader.
Robert Frost
-
Light is more important than the lantern, The poem more important than the notebook.
Nizar Qabbani
-
If you agree with me that a poem can be as bountiful as a rich Victorian narrative, and as wise... then you'll want to join me here in the Wow, I Like No Need of Sympathy Club. Your membership fee is the same as your membership privileges: this book.
Albert Goldbarth
-
Re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency, not only in its words, but in the silent lines of its lips and face, and between the lashes of your eyes, and in every motion and joint of your body.
Walt Whitman
-
A poem is a window that hangs between two or more human beings who otherwise live in darkened rooms.
Stephen Dobyns
-
My dance is a sacred poem in which each movement is a word and whose every word is underlined by music. The temple in which I dance can be vague or faithfully reproduced, for I am the temple.
Mata Hari
-
I wrote a poem about it, and then threw it away, because that’s the last thing I need right now: More words dedicated to people who will never dedicate a single thing to me
Charlotte Green
-
Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting. . . . Read it a hundred times; it will forever keep its freshness as a metal keeps its fragrance. It can never lose its sense of a meaning that once unfolded by surprise as it went.
Robert Frost
-
Written in support of abolishing the Corn Laws, it became Elliott's most famous poem. The Peoples Anthem When wilt thou save the people Oh, God of mercy! When? Not kings and lords, but nations! Not thrones and crowns, but men! Flowers of thy heart, of God they are. Let them not pass like weeds, away Their heritage a sunless day! God save the people! When wilt thou save the people? Oh, God of mercy! When? The people Lord the people! Not thrones and crowns, but men! God save the people! Thine they are, Thy children, as thy angels fair, Save them from bondage and despair. God save the people!
Ebenezer Elliott
-
You can publish a poem you think is a very important poem, and you don't hear a word from anyone. You can publish a book of poetry by dropping it off a cliff and waiting to hear an echo. Quite often, you'll never hear a thing. So doing that, using older work, puts it in a context, and that sort of forces the reader to realize what its importance is-if it has any. Everything needs a context. You're not going to recognize a poet unless you have a context.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
-
Every story, every poem, every written piece is about belonging. There is a me, there is a we, there is an us, and we want to belong to it or we don't want to belong. You can read every story with this as its main focus.
Alejandro Zambra
-
When I see a cow, it is not an animal to eat, it is a poem of pity for me and I worship it and I shall defend its worship against the whole world.
Mahatma Gandhi
-
As children gath'ring pebbles on the shore. Or if I would delight my private hours With music or with poem, where so soon As in our native language can I find That solace?
John Milton
