Poetry Quotes
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There were three great Virginia poets in the very beginning - George Washington, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson. 'What!' you say. 'We do not even know the names of their publishers. They were not poets!' Well, how do you know? Did you ever really read them? What do you know about it? Their very names will breathe poetry forever.
Vachel Lindsay
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Besides the actual reading in class of many poems, I would suggest you do two things: first, while teaching everything you can and keeping free of it, teach that poetry is a mode of discourse that differs from logical exposition.
A. R. Ammons
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The poet exposes himself to the risk. All that has been said about poetry, all that he has learned about poetry, is only a partial assurance.
A. R. Ammons
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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.
Salman Rushdie
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I think I felt at some point that I couldn't understand poetry or that it was beyond me or it didn't speak to my experience. I think that was because I hadn't yet found the right poems to invite me in.
Natasha Trethewey
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I think if a poet wanted to lead, he or she would want the message to be unequivocally clear and free of ambiguity. Whereas poetry is actually the home of ambiguity, ambivalence and uncertainty.
Billy Collins
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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
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If poetry should address itself to the same needs and aspirations, the same hopes and fears, to which the Bible addresses itself, it might rival it in distribution.
Wallace Stevens
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The romanticised life, where all the great poetry and music and art of the world comes from, is great but it requires a lot of self-indulgence.
Laura Marling
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Could we say that the short short is to other kinds of fiction somewhat as the lyric is to other kinds of poetry? The lyric does not seek meaning through extension, it accepts the enigmas of confinement. It strives for a rapid unity of impression, an experience rendered in its wink of immediacy. And so too with the short short.
Irving Howe
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Music is more emotional than prose, more revolutionary than poetry. I'm not saying I've got the answers, just a of questions that I don't hear other artists asking.
Malcolm Wilson
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My mum always liked poetry, and she had pictures on the wall, so there was this visual stuff around.
Gary Hume
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I read pretty eclectically - fiction, non-fiction, and poetry - and I've been inspired and influenced by a number of writers.
Barry Eisler
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The sort of poetry I seek resides in objects man can't touch.
E. M. Forster
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Dismissals of poetry are nothing new. It's easy to dismiss poetry if one has not read much of it.
Natasha Trethewey
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I'm not a 'long writer' and have never wanted to write a novel or even a novella. Poetry, like flash fiction, provides a readily accessible canvas to play with. Whether to express an emotion or share a vignette, these forms are often interchangeable.
Marge Simon
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I find in my poetry and prose the rhythms and imagery of the best - I mean, when I'm at my best - of the good Southern black preachers. The lyricism of the spirituals and the directness of gospel songs and the mystery of blues are in my music or in my poetry and prose, or I missed everything.
Maya Angelou
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Extremes, though, are always risky and ordinarily downright baneful, and the dangers of prolonged contact with any poetry that seems to exceed what we most familiarly know of the first-class are formidable.
J. D. Salinger
