Poetry Quotes
-
Today the U.S. is farther from being nourished by poetry than it was a hundred years ago, when books of poems were best-sellers.
-
In Lithuania, I am known as a poet, and they don't care about my cinema. In Europe, they don't know my poetry; in Europe, I am a filmmaker. But here, in the United States, I am only a maverick!
-
For most Americans, poetry plays no role in their everyday lives. But also for most Americans, contemporary painting or jazz or sculpture play no role either. I'm not saying poetry is singled out as a special thing to ignore.
-
Poetry is a way for me to explore a tingly feeling, to let it play itself out, and also to map it. I feel like I'm making little star maps when I write poems.
-
I guess I started writing poetry and stuff and then decided to set it to music.
-
Poetry resonates differently in each culture; it doesn't in America.
-
History is a great deal closer to poetry than is generally realised: in truth, I think, it is in essence the same.
-
I want a fever, in poetry: a fever, and tranquillity.
-
The aim of art is almost divine: to bring to life again if it is writing history, to create if it is writing poetry.
-
I truly hate marketing promotions, and I don't at all approve of encouraging wannabe poets to write bad poetry.
-
The major poets of New Jersey have all suffered, whether it's Whitman, who lost his job for 'Leaves of Grass,' or William Carlos Williams, who was called a communist, or Ginsberg, whose 'Howl' was prosecuted, or myself. If you practise poetry the way I think it needs to be done, you're going to put yourself in jeopardy.
-
For most of history poetry has been an oral art, it retains the vestiges of orality, an experience embedded in the sensuality of sounds.
-
My father had wanted to name me for Dylan Thomas. He had seen him speak on one of those drunken poetry tours he did.
-
Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself, but with its subject.
-
The thing about great poetry is we have no defenses against it.
-
Poetry is adolescence fermented, and thus preserved.
-
After one has abandoned a belief in God, poetry is that essence which takes its place as life’s redemption.
-
Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea.
-
It's as serious as anyone ever gets, you know. It's just words. It's just good poetry.
-
Poetry should... should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.
-
It is a curious thing how poets tend to become ascetics.... Even a debauch for them is a self-flagellation. They go on the loose in cruelty against themselves, admitting that they are pandering to, and despising, the lower self.
-
Disobedience to conscience is voluntary; bad poetry, on the other hand, is usually not made on purpose.
-
There is no Frigate like a book to take us lands away nor any coursers like a page of prancing Poetry.
-
I am addicted to poetry, but the truth is I cannot pass up a good hard-boiled mystery.
