Poetry Quotes
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The only way to get change is not through the courts or - heaven forbid - the politicians, but through a change of human consciousness and through a change of heart. Only through the arts - music, poetry, dance, painting, writing - "can we really reach each other.
Leslie Marmon Silko
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That impulse I think is a form of love. Poetry is something that comes to you, rather than your having to work out its form beforehand.
Judith Wright
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Have you ever heard a good joke? If you've ever heard someone just right, with the right pacing, then you're already on the way to poetry. It's about using words in very precise ways and using gesture.
Rita Dove
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We must be clear that when it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry.
Niels Bohr
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Ornate rhetoric thought out of the rule of Plato... To which poetry would be made subsequent, or indeed rather precedent, as being less subtle and fine, but more simple, sensuous, and passionate.
John Milton
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There's great poetry in the Old Testament and the New Testament. And I'm not interested in trying to prove whether this paragraph is as it was or as it should have been or should not be. My pursuit is to find the truth for me in those stories and make them apropos. The important thing is that people wrote them. These were inspirational stories, and you got to see them that way. If you don't, you'll get in trouble. So I'm not going to spend a lot of time trying to find out whether or not Mary was a virgin. What do I care about Mary being a virgin?
Cecil Williams
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My definition of poetry (if I were forced to give one) would be this: words that have become deeds.
Robert Frost
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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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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 is a matter of life, not just a matter of language.
Lucille Clifton
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Poetry fettered, fetters the human race. Nations are destroyed or flourish in proportion as their poetry, painting, and music are destroyed or flourish.
William Blake
