Poetry Quotes
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Men of real talents in Arms have commonly approved themselves patrons of the liberal arts and friends to the poets, of their own as well as former times. In some instances by acting reciprocally, heroes have made poets, and poets heroes.
George Washington
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Poetry is such an ancient art, and I consider myself young within that art.
Allison Joseph
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I was raised in a strict fundamentalist household, and I always say that gives you a muscle of belief. I want to believe in something, but I don't believe in what my parents believed in. Poetry has taken the place, or I think the arts have taken the place, of religion in my life. I wanted to see how that was working out through the poems.
Barbara Hamby
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Any healthy man can go without food for two days - but not without poetry.
Charles Baudelaire
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Poetry should be common in experience but uncommon in books.
Robert Frost
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I'm pretty much all for poetry in public places - poetry on buses, poetry on subways, on billboards, on cereal boxes.
Billy Collins
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I also could see myself as a stand-up comedian, a fashion designer (for people of all sizes), a hairdresser, an earnest and eventually burnt-out politician, or the owner of a small bistro. But I fear that, without poetry, I would have simply been going through the motions.
Denise Duhamel
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When poetry is on the money, 12 words can slay you. I admire that greatly.
Daniel Woodrell
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I thought of rhyme alone,
For rhyme can beat a measure out of trouble
And make the daylight sweet once more.
William Butler Yeats
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I realised I'd spent a lot of time in my poetry trying to find a way of talking about that whereof we cannot speak.
John Burnside
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I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled poets to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean.
Socrates
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They need to learn poetry. They don't need to learn about poetry. They don't need to be told how to interpret poetry. They don't need to be told how to understand poetry. They need to learn it.
Peter Davison
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Lastly, this threefold poetry flows from three great sources - The Bible, Homer, Shakespeare.... The Bible before the Iliad, the Iliad before Shakespeare.
Victor Hugo
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Americans have been tremendously fortunate in poetry, regarding both the quantity and quality of poetry produced. Unfortunately, it remains in schools and universities; it is not widely distributed.
Joseph Brodsky
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The songs we sing invite the participation of the listener, who is central to finding a way of creating the life of the song at that listening. It's the difference between poetry and didactic writing. One tells you, 'This is it,' and the other says, 'Let's find this together.'
Peter Yarrow
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There is a pleasure in poetic pains / Which only poets know.
William Cowper
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Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason.
Novalis
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I could feel it--inside, and I decided that night, reading poetry beneath a caged light bulb, that real was when you could fee your whole body light up from within.
Han Nolan
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For this reason poetry is something more philosophical and more worthy of serious attention than history.
Aristotle
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All kids draw and write poetry and everything, and some of us last until we're about eighteen, but most drop off at about twelve when some guy comes up and says, "You're no good." That's all we get told all our lives. "You haven't got the ability. You're a cobbler." It happened to all of us, but if somebody had told me all my life, "Yeah, you're a great artist," I would have been a more secure person.
John Lennon
The Beatles
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In most of the world, poetry has such a different reputation than it does in Western culture. Poetry is a popular genre in Afghanistan. If you turned on the radio, there would be a poetry program that would be as popular as The Real Housewives. People aren't listening to poetry as if they're taking their vitamins. Instead, it's a popular vessel you can fill with anything. You could fill it with sass. You could fill it with rage. You could fill it with political statements.
Eliza Griswold
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When I am writing poetry, I try to make my mind go a little lazy, to not think too much, as a way of opening up the part of the brain that makes poems. If I'm successful in this part of the process I'm often not. If my mind gets too lazy it will linger in familiar boring territory, it's like my mind can stroke the physical world.
Dawn Lundy Martin
