POETRY QUOTES III

quotations about poetry


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Some poems are like the Centaurs--a mingling of man and beast, and begotten of Ixion on a cloud.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
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Table-Talk


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Tags: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow


True poetry is not of earth,
'T is more of Heaven by its birth.

WILLIAM BATCHELDER GREENE

"Parnassus", Cloudrifts at Twilight

Tags: William Batchelder Greene


Because I fell in love with poetry, my mother sighed and said that I was doomed to work at a cosmetics factory, naming lipsticks.

GWEN HART

"The Empress of Kisses"


Where you find poems in most people's lives is at weddings and at funerals. Poems are turned to in the great transitions of a life, when we are at sea amid changes too vast to feel in any way the master of. One of the things poems do is demonstrate that you aren't alone -- that other humans have been here before, and have found a way to sustain aliveness, to find beauty within the condition of grief. And this allows you to go on.

JANE HIRSHFIELD

"How can poems transform the world? A chat with poet Jane Hirshfield.", Washington Post, May 13, 2015


Poetry is another way of encouraging people to think and feel deeply about their own lives and their relationships to other people and other communities.

HANNAH ENSOR

"Poetry to fill the air at weekend festival", Tucson Sentinel, April 14, 2016


It tells us a great deal about a man to know that he chooses as his form of expression the poetic medium. It tells us, I think, something about his system of ontology. The composition of poetry is evidence that for him values have a reality, and he is capable of emotion upon the subject of value. The entire corpus of the world's poetry rests upon a theory of universal analogy which teaches that all phenomena in some degree resemble each other. There is a minimal truth in even the wildest metaphor simply because the world is, from one point of view, a unitary thing.

RICHARD WEAVER

"Agrarianism in Exile"


Poets are the chemists of sentiment, for they analyze and purify it.

ELIZA COOK

Diamond Dust

Tags: Eliza Cook


Poetry is simply the most beautiful, impressive and wisely effective mode of saying things, and hence its importance.

MATTHEW ARNOLD

"Heinrich Heine", Essays in Criticism, First Series

Tags: Matthew Arnold


The crown of literature is poetry.

MATTHEW ARNOLD

Essays in Criticism, Second Series

Tags: Matthew Arnold


Poetry, far more than fiction, reveals the soul of humanity.

AMY LOWELL

preface, Tendencies in Modern Poetry

Tags: Amy Lowell


You speak
As one who fed on poetry.

EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON

Richelieu

Tags: Edward Bulwer Lytton


Poetry is the impish attempt to paint the color of the wind.

MAXWELL BODENHEIM

attributed, An Introduction to Poetry and Criticism

Tags: Maxwell Bodenheim


No verse which is unmusical or obscure can be regarded as poetry whatever other qualities it may possess.

ALFRED AUSTIN

The Bridling of Pegasus: Prose Papers on Poetry

Tags: Alfred Austin


A lot of being a poet consists of willed ignorance. If you woke up from your trance and realized the nature of the life-threatening and dignity-destroying precipice you were walking along, you would switch into actuarial sciences immediately.

MARGARET ATWOOD

On Writing Poetry

Tags: Margaret Atwood


A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.

W. H. AUDEN

"Squares and Oblongs", Poets at Work

Tags: W. H. Auden


Is poetry more important than politics? In a practical sense, probably not, but people have different perspectives and will place their values accordingly. I know I couldn't munch through metaphors if I was half-starved and shivering on the streets - though I'd probably give it a go. Still, as someone pointed out, a brew does taste better with a spoonful of sugar and a splash of semi-skimmed than with a dash of Dylan Thomas.

JADE CUTTLE

"A plate of poetry, please: Is poetry more important than politics?", Varsity Online, May 3, 2016


So what rhyming poems do is they take all these nearby sound curves and remind you that they first existed that way in your brain. Before they meant something specific, they had a shape and a way of being said. And now, yes, gloom and broom are floating fifty miles away from each other in you mind because they refer to different notions, but they're cheek-by-jowl as far as your tongue is concerned.

NICHOLSON BAKER

The Anthologist

Tags: Nicholson Baker


None knows the reason why this curse
Was sent on him, this love of making verse.

HORACE

Ars Poetica

Tags: Horace


A poet hurts himself by writing prose; as a racehorse hurts his motion by condescending to draw a team.

WILLIAM SHENSTONE

Essays on Men and Manners


Poetry never loses its appeal. Sometimes its audience wanes and sometimes it swells like a wave. But the essential mystery of being human is always going to engage and compel us. We're involved in a mystery. Poetry uses words to put us in touch with that mystery. We're always going to need it.

EDWARD HIRSCH

interview, 2007

Tags: Edward Hirsch