POETRY QUOTES X

quotations about poetry

A satirical poet is the check of the laymen on bad priests.

JOHN DRYDEN

Fables, Ancient and Modern

Tags: John Dryden


Then one can't make a living out of poetry?
Certainly not. What fool expects to? Out of rhyming, yes.

JACK LONDON

Martin Eden

Tags: Jack London


There is a widespread notion in the public mind that poetic inspiration has something mysterious and translunar about it, something which altogether escapes human analysis, which it would be almost sacrilege for analysis to touch. The Romans spoke of the poet's divine afflatus, the Elizabethans of his fine frenzy. And even in our own day critics, and poets themselves, are not lacking who take the affair quite as seriously. Our critics and poets are themselves largely responsible for this -- they are a sentimental lot, even when most discerning, and cannot help indulging, on the one hand, in a reverential attitude toward the art, and, on the other, in a reverential attitude toward themselves.

CONRAD AIKEN

Scepticisms: Notes on Contemporary Poetry

Tags: Conrad Aiken


Poetry is a controlled refinement of sobbing.

NICHOLSON BAKER

The Anthologist

Tags: Nicholson Baker


The most generous critic, if he is to be discriminating and just, cannot, let me say again, allow that any verse which is profoundly obscure or utterly unmusical, no matter how intellectual in substance, deserves the appellation of poetry.

ALFRED AUSTIN

The Bridling of Pegasus

Tags: Alfred Austin


Poetry can be a really great outlet for kids and teens. There are so many rules when you're a teen, but writing poetry is totally open-ended. It's a great way for kids and teens to talk about their feelings and what's going on with no rules. Whatever comes out, comes out.

ELISSA DICKSON

"Elissa Dickson is new San Miguel County Poet Laureate", The Daily Planet, May 4, 2016


You have to write a poem the way you ride a horse--you have to know what to do with it. You have to be in charge of a horse or it will eat all day--you'll never get back to the barn. But if you tell the horse how to be a horse, if you force it, the horse will probably break a leg. The horse and rider have to be together.

JACK GILBERT

The Paris Review, fall/winter 2005

Tags: Jack Gilbert


There's no preparation for poetry. Four years of grave digging with a nice volume of poetry or a book of philosophy in one's pocket would serve as well as any university.

CHARLES SIMIC

The Paris Review, spring 2005

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Poetry makes life what lights and music do the stage.

CHARLES DICKENS

The Pickwick Papers

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It is not in his personal emotions, the emotions provoked by particular events in his life, that the poet is in any way remarkable or interesting. His particular emotions may be simple, or crude, or flat. The emotion in his poetry will be a very complex thing, but not with the complexity of the emotions of people who have very complex or unusual emotions in life. One error, in fact, of eccentricity in poetry is to seek for new human emotions to express; and in this search for novelty in the wrong place it discovers the perverse. The business of the poet is not to find new emotions, but to use the ordinary ones and, in working them up into poetry, to express feelings which are not in actual emotions at all.

T. S. ELIOT

Tradition and the Individual Talent

Tags: T. S. Eliot


So many poets die ere they are known,
I pray you, hear me kindly for their sake.
Not of the harp, but of the soul alone,
Is the deep music all true minstrels make:
Hear my soul's music, and I will beguile,
With string and song, your festival awhile.

HENRY ABBEY

"The Troubadour"

Tags: Henry Abbey


Poetry is one of the ancient arts, and it began, as did all the fine arts, within the original wilderness of the earth. Also, it began through the process of seeing, and feeling, and hearing, and smelling, and touching, and then remembering--I mean remembering in words--what these perceptual experiences were like, while trying to describe the endless invisible fears and desires of our inner lives.

MARY OLIVER

A Poetry Handbook

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Poets don't draw. They unravel their handwriting and then tie it up again, but differently.

JEAN COCTEAU

attributed, Jean Cocteau and the French Scene

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If the poet would avoid pepsis in his patients, his scalpel must be as clean as the surgeon's.

AUSTIN O'MALLEY

Keystones of Thought

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You can tell it's a poem because it's swimming in a little gel pack of white space. That shows it's a poem.

NICHOLSON BAKER

The Anthologist

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Poets are the most injurious romancers by which society is deluded; for they excite the feelings or the imagination to such an extent--creating superhuman excellences--that the dull realities of life, its frauds, its meanness, its falsehood, or even its truth, alike sicken and disgust.

CHARLES WILLIAM DAY

The Maxims, Experiences, and Observations of Agogos

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For a genre of literature that is supposedly dead, poetry provides some of the most quoted material in the history of quotes.

STAFF EDITORIAL

The Nevada Sagebrush, April 12, 2016


Poetry has the power to turn words into darts that shoot under your skin.

PENNY ASHTON

"Poetry Idol's organiser is shocked and saddened to learn that slam poetry is 'dumb-ass and not good'", The Spinoff, April 28, 2016


The true poet has no choice of material. The material plainly chooses him, not he it.

J. D. SALINGER

"Seymour: An Introduction"

Tags: J. D. Salinger


Beauty is the sole legitimate province of the poem.

EDGAR ALLAN POE

"The Philosophy of Composition"

Tags: Edgar Allan Poe