Poetry Quotes
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The charge frequently leveled against poetry - that it is difficult, obscure, hermetic and whatnot - indicates not the state of poetry but, frankly, the rung of the evolutionary ladder on which society is stuck.
Joseph Brodsky
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Translation is an interestingly different way to be involved both with poetry and with the language that I've found myself living in much of the time. I think the two feed each other.
Marilyn Hacker
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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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When poetry is on the money, 12 words can slay you. I admire that greatly.
Daniel Woodrell
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My parents were willing to let me follow my nose, do what I wanted to do, and they supported my interest by buying the books that I wanted for birthdays and Christmas, almost always poetry books.
Donald Hall
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This proves that great lyric poetry can die, be reborn, die again, but will always remain one of the most outstanding creations of the human soul.
Eugenio Montale
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There is a pleasure in poetic pains / Which only poets know.
William Cowper
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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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I think poetry workshops get a bad rap. I'm sure some aren't good, but in general, I like the format. I try and keep mine pretty informal. Sometimes we have wine or sake, and we read aloud, and we talk.
Elaine Equi
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Astronomy, that micography of heaven, is the most magnificent of the sciences. ... Astronomy has its clear side and its luminous side; on its clear side it is tinctured with algebra, on its luminous side with poetry.
Victor Hugo
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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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Poetry is poetry. My process is I try to write the best poem I can, in the best way to communicate whatever it is the poem is trying to communicate, and then I try to figure out the best way to present that poem to a live audience. It's all craft, just different stages of craft.
Bao Phi
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I think it's really hard to move between genres, and I think, especially in Britain, we're very judgmental about it - me included. I know that when an actor comes out with some poetry or an album, I think, 'Oh crikey, what's this going to be like?'
Andrea Riseborough
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I love indices! They are poetry in and of themselves, depending on the book.
Wendy C. Ortiz
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I don't create poetry, I create myself, for me my poems are a way to me.
Edith Södergran
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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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Any healthy man can go without food for two days - but not without poetry.
Charles Baudelaire
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I've always used poetry to explain myself to myself. These things just sat in my psyche and then came out.
Jonathan Galassi
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In science, one tries to say what no one else has ever said before. In poetry, one tries to say what everyone else has already said, but better. This explains, in essence, why good poetry is as rare as good science.
Anthony Zee
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With fiction, I tend to get to my desk and start writing. Poetry I write in my head, often while walking, so that my poems have an organic quality, hopefully.
John Burnside
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That's one of the great things about poetry; one realises that one does one's little turn - that you're just part of the great crop, as it were.
Paul Muldoon
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To me, poetry is somebody standing up, so to speak, and saying, with as little concealment as possible, what it is for him or her to be on earth at this moment...
Galway Kinnell
