Poetry Quotes
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Students often have such a lofty idea of what a poem is, and I want them to realize that their own lives are where the poetry comes from. The most important things are to respect the language; to know the classical rules, even if only to break them; and to be prepared to edit, to revise, to shape.
Yusef Komunyakaa
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In the total darkness, poetry is still there, and it is there for you.
Abbas Kiarostami
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With several different kinds of poetry to choose from, a man would decide that he would like best to be an epic poet, and he would set out, in conscious determination, on an epic poem.
Lascelles Abercrombie
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Though my poems are about evenly split between traditionally formal work that uses rhyme and meter and classical structure, and work that is freer, I feel that the music of language remains at the core of it all. Sound, rhythm, repetition, compression - these elements of my poetry are also elements of my prose.
Floyd Skloot
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My verses are my diary. My poetry is a poetry of proper names.
Marina Tsvetaeva
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One culture I find fascinating to juxtapose against American culture is the culture of Germany. They've gone through a long process through their art, poetry, public discourse, their politics, of owning the fact of their complicity in what happened in World War II. It's still a topic of everyday conversation in Germany.
Chris Jordan
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Poetry begins where language starts: in the shadows and accidents of one person's life.
Eavan Boland
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Probably induced by the asthma, I started reading and writing early on, my literary efforts from the age of about nine running chiefly to poetry and plays.
Patrick White
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That's the thing with me being a former athlete: in the way I attack characters and attack poetry is from the base of being an athlete.
Omari Hardwick
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I love the simple poetry of theater, where you can stand in a spotlight on a stage and wrap a coat around you, and say, 'It was 1860 and it was winter...'
Gary Oldman
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I think poetry always lives its life, and people come to it and people go away from it, 'people' in the sense of larger numbers of people. It's as though you begin to think that poetry is a resource, and that at certain times people seem to need it or want it or can find sustenance in it, and at other times they can't.
C. K. Williams
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I found poetry at 12 and 13 and, lo and behold, learned that my attorney father had a background in poetry - as he wore dashikis and Afros in the '70s and named his kids Arabic names. He was a poet and a lot like The Last Poets and Gil Scott-Heron and all of these folks. He definitely was an artist.
Omari Hardwick
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Poetry, at its best, is the language your soul would speak if you could teach your soul to speak.
Jim Harrison
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Ever been kidnapped by a poet if i were a poet i'd kidnap you put you in my phrases and meter.
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr.
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I didn't write anything at all except book reports until I was in seventh grade, and then I wrote mostly poetry for myself.
Cynthia Voigt
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No poetry that I'm aware of, however bad or glorious, has ever left somebody a worse person than they were before they read it.
Felix Dennis
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Whether we call it sacrifice, or poetry, or adventure, it is always the same voice that calls.
Aristotle
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Do-gooders are easily overlooked. We're supposed to be soft, touchy-feely types, who wear Birkenstocks, compost everything, and write poetry by candlelight.
Nancy Lublin
