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Poet Quotes

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Poet Quotes

“Antagoras the poet was boiling a conger, and Antigonus, coming behind him as he was stirring his skillet, said, "Do you think, Antagoras, that Homer boiled congers when he wrote the deeds of Agamemnon?" Antagoras replied, "Do you think, O king, that Agamemnon, when he did such exploits, was a peeping in his army to see who boiled congers?”

Thinking Said Behinds Poet Kings Army Deeds Exploits Stirring Boiling Peeping Agamemnon

Book:Plutarch's Morals

Source: Plutarch's Morals

“Joy is a part of my process. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that poetry, as a practice, necessitates a sense of joy. It's exhilarating to come into contact with the things we write into being. And a real sense of play and abandon even when we are relying on hard-won technique, and even when the aim is deadly serious. How often do we get the excuse to stop, think, and then stop thinking altogether and try to listen to what sits behind our outside of our thoughts? Poets are lucky.”

Thinking Writing Trying Real Hard Play Facts Joy Poetry Process Behinds Practice Serious Poet Lucky Aim Excuse Technique Contact Abandon Our Thoughts Exhilarating

Author:Tracy K. Smith

“Both poet and painter want to reach the silence behind the language, the silence within the language. Both painter and poet want their work to shine not only in daylight but (by whatever illusionist magic) from within.”

Want Science Religion Language Behinds Silence Magic Poet Shining Painter Silence Is Daylight Illusionists

Book:Figures of thought: speculations on the meaning of poetry & other essays

Source: Figures of thought: speculations on the meaning of poetry & other essays

“I was a tiny bug. Now a mountain. I was left behind. Now honored at the head. You healed my wounded hunger and anger, and made me a poet who sings about joy.”

Made Spiritual Joy Left Growth Behinds Poet Mountain Hunger Tiny Spiritual Growth Wounded Honored Bugs Left Behind Healed

Author:Rumi

“I am the scroll of the poet behind which samurai swords are being sharpened.”

Behinds Poet Deception Samurai

Author:Lester Cole

“I hope any poem I've ever written could stand on its own and not need to be a part of biography, critical theory or cultural studies. I don't want to give a poetry reading and have to provide the story behind the poem in order for it to make sense to an audience. I certainly don't want the poem to require a critical intermediary - a "spokescritic." I want my poems to be independently meaningful moments of power for a good reader. And that's the expectation I initially bring to other poets' writing.”

“No more than a famous master can be replaced and another take over the completion of the half-finished painting he has left behind can the great poet and thinker, the great statesman and the great soldier, be replaced. For their activity lies always in the province of art. It is not mechanically trained but inborn by God's grace.”

Art Lying Left Behinds Half Grace Painting Poet Masters Activity Soldier Finished Thinker Replaced Left Behind Statesmen Provinces Completion God's Grace Great Poet

Author:Adolf Hitler

“Without those forerunners, Jane Austen and the Brontes and George Eliot could no more have written than Shakespeare could have written without Marlowe, or Marlowe without Chaucer, or Chaucer without those forgotten poets who paved the ways and tamed the natural savagery of the tongue. For masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice.”

Source: A Room of One's Own

“I was joking earlier when I said that all writers are manic depressives, but it's a joke with a lot of truth behind it. For fiction writers and poets, too, there's something wrong with you and you do this art as a way of correcting it or addressing it in some way.”

Way Art Said Behinds Fiction Poet Truth Is Jokes Fiction Writers Correcting Manic Writers And Poets

Author:T.C. Boyle

“There are still many writers out in the Bay, extraordinary writers like Gina Valdez, a poet who I just saw in Portland. We have young people like Eduardo Corral, who won the Yale Younger Poets Award. José Antonio Rodriguez, published by Luis Rodriguez. But there are only a few of us who are paid attention to in New York. There are legions behind us who are not.”

People Stills Young Behinds Attention Saws New York Poet Paid Extraordinary Awards Yale Legion Antonio Portland Gina

Author:Sandra Cisneros

“I'm about fifty years behind as far as my preferences go and I must say that the poets who excite me most are the Americans. There are very few contemporary English poets that I admire.”

Years Behinds Poet Contemporary Admire Fifty Preference

Author:Sylvia Plath

“When poets die, other poets take it personally, almost as an affront. A lot of us "left behind" are thinking that poetry is the one thing keeping us alive and present, so what does it mean when one of our ranks chooses to end his or her life? There's an anger beneath the grief, you know? That anger and grief, in turn, breeds other poems from those of us left behind.”

Thinking Knows Mean Doe Ends Dies Turns Left Grief Behinds Alive One Thing Poet Poetry Is Left Behind Affront

Author:Allison Joseph