Poetry Quotes

The short story seems like the best of all possible worlds. I do feel it is closer to writing poetry than to writing a novel, with its requirements of concentration and economy.

James Lasdun
- Writing
- Poetry
So I really began as a failed poet - although when I first wanted to be a writer, I learned to write prose by reading poetry.

Nicholson Baker
- Reading
- Poetry

After one has abandoned a belief in God, poetry is that essence which takes its place as life’s redemption.

Wallace Stevens
- Life
- God
- Poetry
I'm a great believer in poetry out of the classroom, in public places, on subways, trains, on cocktail napkins. I'd rather have my poems on the subway than around the seminar table at an MFA program.

Billy Collins
- Great
- Poetry
Poetry itself is music. I'm just lucky that I can convert it into music. William Blake is my favorite poet of all time, and he said that he wasn't quite familiar with the sounds of music. If so, he would have been a musician. All of his poems are all like songs, and that's how I always try to start my thoughts.

Benjamin Clementine
- Time
- Music
- Thoughts
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.

Aaron Belz
- Writing
- Feeling
- Play
My father had wanted to name me for Dylan Thomas. He had seen him speak on one of those drunken poetry tours he did.

Dylan Walsh
- Father
- Poetry
I have taught the long poem off and on for years. The more book-length poems I read and studied and taught the more interested I was in the possibilities in writing a poetry that applied formal and substantive options of narrative and non-narrative, lyric and non-lyric. I found many pleasures in this kind of writing. The long poem is as old as the art form.

C.D. Wright
- Long
- Writing
- Art