Poetry Quotes
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If I was a poet, I had become one because poetry, more intensely than any other practice, could not evade its anachronism and marginality and so constituted a kind of acknowledgment of my own preposterousness, admitting my bad faith in good faith, so to speak.
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If what distinguishes us from other species is speech, then poetry, which is the supreme linguistic operation, is our anthropological - indeed, genetic - goal.
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Any healthy man can go without food for two days - but not without poetry.
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Poetry is such an ancient art, and I consider myself young within that art.
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Poetry arises from the desire to get beyond the finite and the historical—the human world of violence and difference—and to reach the transcendent or divine. You're moved to write a poem, you feel called upon to sing, because of that transcendent impulse. But as soon as you move from that impulse to the actual poem, the song of the infinite is compromised by the finitude of its terms.
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I was seized with a strong desire to write poetry, so strong, in fact, that in imagination I thought I heard a voice crying in my ears – "Write! Write". I wondered what could be the matter with me, and I began to walk backwards and forwards in a great fit of excitement, saying to myself– "I know nothing about poetry."
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Poetry was the maiden I loved, but politics was the harridan I married.
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We must be clear that when it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry.
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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...
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I write poetry to figure things out. It's what I use as a navigating tool in my life, so when there's something that I just can't understand, I have to "poem" my way through it. For that reason I write a lot about family, because my family confuses me and I'm always trying to figure them out. I write a lot about love, because love is continually confusing in all of its many glorious aspects.
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Experience is the basis of poetry.
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If a poet interprets a poem of his own he limits its suggestibility.
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For a long time, I saw writing prose as chewing rocks compared to the velocities of writing poetry.
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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.
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The poetry of heroism appeals irresistibly to those who don't go to a war, and even more to those whom the war is making enormously wealthy. It's always so.
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I write poetry. It comes naturally to me, but from a technical point of view it forces me to pay close attention to language and to scan.
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There is but one poetry-true poetry.
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Many other cultures value poetry more than we do. In Ireland, poetry is a top cultural pursuit, the art to end all arts.
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To translate poetry, one has to possess some art, at the very least the art of stylistic re-embodiment.
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Poetry cannot take sides except with life.
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The ordinary-sized stuff which is our lives, the things people write poetry about—clouds—daffodils—waterfalls—what happens in a cup of coffee when the cream goes in—these things are full of mystery, as mysterious to us as the heavens were to the Greeks.
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One of the most treasured books that I own is Donald Allen's 'The New American Poetry, 1945-1960.' It was a totem of great importance and potency to my group of writer friends in college from 1960 to 1964.
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I was just reading some poetry, and it talked about how things start as one thing and change into another, and I just thought, what a great concept for a song.
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Above all I am not concerned with Poetry. My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity.
