POETRY QUOTES IV

quotations about poetry

We feel poetry as we feel the closeness of a woman, or as we feel a mountain or a bay. If we feel it immediately, why dilute it with other words, which no doubt will be weaker than our feelings?

JORGE LUIS BORGES

"Poetry"

Tags: Jorge Luis Borges


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


Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.

PLATO

Ion

Tags: Plato


I think it was rather an advantage not having any living poets in England or America in whom one took any particular interest. I don't know what it would be like but I think it would be a rather troublesome distraction to have such a lot of dominating presences, as you call them, about. Fortunately we weren't bothered by each other.

T. S. ELIOT

The Paris Review, spring-summer 1959

Tags: T. S. Eliot


I approach poetry and spirituality like literary nitroglycerin -- a little can do a lot and you better damn well be careful with it.

CRAIG JOHNSON

"A Conversation with Craig Johnson", The Cold Dish

Tags: Craig Johnson


There has never been a great poet who wasn't also a great reader of poetry.

EDWARD HIRSCH

interview, 2007

Tags: Edward Hirsch


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


I string sounds together. But to string them I have to remember a bunch of old ones I heard somewhere and then juggle them into a new rhythm and shape.

FRANK LOESSER

letter to Angel Steinbeck, A Most Remarkable Fella: Frank Loesser and the Guys and Dolls in His Life

Tags: Frank Loesser


If you can't be a bad poet at seventeen, with your brother dying just down the corridor, what hope is there for poetry?

BERNARD BECKETT

Lullaby

Tags: Bernard Beckett


When an exquisite poem brings one's eyes to the point of tears, those tears are not evidence of an excess of joy, they are witness far more to an exacerbated melancholy, a disposition of the nerves, a nature exiled among imperfect things, which would like to possess, without delay, a paradise revealed on this very same earth.

CHARLES BAUDELAIRE

"Notes nouvelles sur Edgar Poe III", L'art romantique

Tags: Charles Baudelaire


From my earliest sense of self, I knew that I would be--should be--a poet. It was not as if I had a choice; more like the dying beauty all about breathed its last breath in me and commanded that I be doomed to play with words the rest of my days.

DAN SIMMONS

Hyperion

Tags: Dan Simmons


A long poem is a test of invention which I take to be the Polar star of poetry, as fancy is the sails, and imagination the rudder.

JOHN KEATS

letter to Benjamin Bailey, October 8, 1817

Tags: John Keats


Poetry is God's work.

KATY LEDERER

"An Interview with Katy Lederer", Thermos Magazine, January 21, 2010

Tags: Katy Lederer


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


The crown of literature is poetry.

MATTHEW ARNOLD

Essays in Criticism, Second Series

Tags: Matthew Arnold


My poetry was born between the hill and the river, it took its voice from the rain, and like the timber, it steeped itself in the forests.

PABLO NERUDA

Memoirs

Tags: Pablo Neruda


Poetry might be defined as the clear expression of mixed feelings.

W. H. AUDEN

New Year Letter

Tags: W. H. Auden


We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.

WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

"Anima Hominis", Per Amica Silentia Lunae

Tags: William Butler Yeats


The permanent passions of mankind--love, religion, patriotism, humanitarianism, hate, revenge, ambition; the conflict between free will and fate; the rise and fall of empires--these are all great themes, and, if greatly treated, and in accordance with the essentials applicable to all poetry, may produce poetry of the loftiest kind.

ALFRED AUSTIN

The Bridling of Pegasus

Tags: Alfred Austin


No doubt Plato's notion that poets should chant nothing but hymns to the Gods and praises of virtue is a little narrow and exacting, but if they are to sing songs worthy of themselves, and of mankind, they must be on the side of virtue and of the Gods.

ALFRED AUSTIN

The Bridling of Pegasus

Tags: Alfred Austin