Poetry Quotes
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Poetry takes you into the recesses of the language, the neglected corners, cracks and crannies and to the big sky of wonder. It opens the door to a critique without which you have rather boring analytical tools by comparison. To cultivate poetry means to stay with it. Not to abandon hope, but to abide.
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One thing I do know is that poetry, to be understood, must be clear.
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Any work that is not rooted in myth and poetry or that does not partake of the depth and essence of the universe is merely a ghost.
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The aim of art is almost divine: to bring to life again if it is writing history, to create if it is writing poetry.
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It's always good to show that poetry isn't the little depressed lyric people believe it to be, that it's something bigger.
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A particular ikon an aid to devotion may be itself a word of art, but that is logically accidental; its artistic merits will not make it a better ... ikon. They may make it a worse one.
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Poetry taught me a great deal about language and images, but when it came to plotting, I was stumped. It's been very much a learn-by-doing thing for me.
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I always wrote poetry as a teenager and it was always so dark, but it made me feel good to get it out.
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Every afternoon, I shut the door of my bedroom to write: Poetry was secret, dangerous, wicked and delicious.
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Poetry alone cannot change the material conditions of an unjust society, but I challenge anyone to name a substantive freedom movement that does not have poetry.
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I've cancelled all my subscriptions to poetry magazines. I prefer to read the 'New Scientist.'
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Shakespeare wrote better poetry for not knowing too much; Milton, I think, knew too much finally for the good of his poetry.
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Some of the greatest poetry is revealing to the reader the beauty in something that was so simple you had taken it for granted.
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Let a man be stimulated by poetry, established by the rules of propriety, and perfected by music.
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Is there any purpose to translating poetry? A poem does not contain information of importance, like a signpost or a warning notice.
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I always knew that was what I wanted to do - to write, particularly poetry.
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I read poetry to save time.
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Prose is private drama; poetry is corporate drama. (p. 275)
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Lyric poetry is, of course, musical in origin. I do know that what happened to poetry in the twentieth century was that it began to be written for the page. When it's a question of typography, why not? Poets have done beautiful things with typography - Apollinaire's 'Calligrammes,' that sort of thing.
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For Mallarmé naming an object meant suppressing three-quarters of its poetic pleasure (which consists in the joy of guessing bit by bit - "le suggérer, voilà le rêve!").
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The divorce of poetry and music was first reflected by the printed page. (p. 227)
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History is a great deal closer to poetry than is generally realised: in truth, I think, it is in essence the same.
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Poetry is a mixture of common sense, which not all have, with an uncommon sense, which very few have.
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In youth it is the outward aspect of things that most engages us; while in age, thought or reflection is the predominating qualityof the mind. Hence, youth is the time for poetry, and age is more inclined to philosophy. In practical affairs it is the same: a man shapes his resolutions in youth more by the impression that the outward world makes upon him; whereas, when he is old, it is thought that determines his actions.
