Best poet & critics Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“Some have at first for wits, then poets passed, Turned critics next, and proved plain fools at last.”

“When modernist poetry, or what not so long ago passed for modernist poetry, can reach the stage where the following piece by Mr. Ezra Pound is seriously offered as a poem, there is some justification for the plain reader and orthodox critic who shrinks from anything that may be labelled 'modernist' either in terms of condemnation or approbation. Better he thinks, that ten authentic poets should be left for posterity to discover than one charlatan should be allowed to steal into the Temple of Fame.”

Thinking Should May Long Left Term Pieces Stage Poet Reader Fame Ten Critics Following Stealing Temples Pounds Orthodox Justification Long Ago Shrinks Posterity Condemnation Charlatans

Author:Laura Riding

“A critic must accept what is best in a poet, and thus become his best encourager.”

Accepting Poet Critics Encouragers

Book:Poets of America

Source: Poets of America

“The critics could never mortify me out of heart - because I love poetry for its own sake, - and, tho' with no stoicism and some ambition, care more for my poems than for my poetic reputation.”

Heart Care Poet Ambition Critics Sake Reputation Poetic Stoicism Love Poetry

Book:The Brownings' Correspondence

Source: The Brownings' Correspondence

“The critic ... should be not merely a poet, not merely a philosopher, not merely an observer, but tempered of all three.”

Should Three Poet Critics Philosopher Observers

Book:Memoirs, [ed.] by R.W. Emerson, W.H. Channing, and J.F. Clarke

Source: Memoirs, [ed.] by R.W. Emerson, W.H. Channing, and J.F. Clarke

“The way something looks or sounds is also what it means. Words as visual and aural phenomena, which mainly poets, not critics and prose writers, tend to be obsessed with. I think maybe I'm more of a curator than I am a writer in the strict sense because I am interested in how everything on the page, in a space, works together.”

Thinking Way Looks Mean Together Sound Space Poet Pages Critics Obsessed Visuals Prose Working Together Strict Curator Mean Words

Author:Masha Tupitsyn

“What shall I say about poetry? What shall I say about those clouds, or about the sky? Look; look at them; look at it! And nothing more. Don't you understand anything about poetry? Leave that to the critics and the professors. For neither you, nor I, nor any poet knows what poetry is.”

Knows Looks Poetry Sky Poet Critics Clouds Poetry Is Professors

Author:Federico Garcia Lorca

“if you think it so easy to be a critic, so difficult to be a poet or a painter or film experimenter, may I suggest you try both? You may discover why there are so few critics, so many poets.”

Ifs Thinking Trying May Film Easy Difficult Poet Critics Painter

Book:For Keeps

Source: For Keeps

“If it really was Queen Elizabeth who demanded to see Falstaff in a comedy, then she showed herself a very perceptive critic. But even in The Merry Wives of Windsor, Falstaff has not and could not have found his true home because Shakespeare was only a poet. For that he was to wait nearly two hundred years till Verdi wrote his last opera. Falstaff is not the only case of a character whose true home is the world of music; others are Tristan, Isolde and Don Giovanni.”

Ifs World Years Two Character Home Lasts Found Waiting Cases Comedy Wife Poet Hundred Critics Queens Opera Merry Queen Elizabeth True Home Windsor Falstaff Verdi

Author:W. H. Auden

“After all, poets shouldn't be their own interpreters and shouldn't carefully dissect their poems into everyday prose; that would mean the end of being poets. Poets send their creations into the world, it is up to the reader, the aesthetician, and the critic to determine what they wanted to say with their creations.”

World Mean Ends Wanted Poetry Creation Poet Reader Criticism Critics Everyday Determine Prose Interpreter

Author:Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“When poets go off the boil, they sound like bumble bees; when critics do, they sound like sewing machines.”

Poetry Sound Poet Machines Critics Bees Sewing Bumble Bee

Author:Mason Cooley

“In truth it may be laid down as an almost universal rule that good poets are bad critics.”

May Poet Criticism Universal Critics

Author:Thomas B. Macaulay

“Men of great talents, whether poets or historians, seldom escape the attacks of those who, without ever favoring the world with any production of their own, take delight in criticising the works of others.”

Men World Talent Poet Critics Productions Delight Historian Great Talent

Book:Don Quixote

Source: Don Quixote

“a. Critics: people who make monuments out of books. b. Biographers: people who make books out of monuments. c. Poets: people who raze monuments. d. Publishers: people who sell rubble. e. Readers: people who buy it.”

People Book Literature Poet Reader Sells Critics Publishers Monument Biographers Rubble

Book:Trust

Source: Trust

“It is quite cruel that a poet cannot wander through his regions of enchantment without having a critic, forever, like the old man of the sea, upon his back.”

Men Forever Sea Poet Criticism Critics Wander Regions Old Man Enchantment

Book:Select Poetical Works

Source: Select Poetical Works

“There's always been what I would call the William Carlos Williams strain, in which poems of simplicity and clarity are valued by a different community. I was talking to Galway Kinnell one day, and he said that there was an audience for poetry up until about 1920 and then, from that point on, the poets and the critics drifted.”

Different Community Audience Poet One Day Critics Simplicity Clarity

Author:Ted Kooser

“I was on television a couple of years ago and the reporter asked me, "How does it feel being on mainstream media? It's not often poets get on mainstream media." I said, "Well I think you're the dominant media, the dominant culture, but you're not the mainstream media. The mainstream media is still the high culture of intellectuals: writers, readers, editors, librarians, professors, artists, art critics, poets, novelists, and people who think. They are the mainstream culture, even though you may be the dominant culture."”

People Thinking Art Artist Culture Poet Couple Critics Librarian

Author:Lawrence Ferlinghetti

“The generous Critic fann'd the Poet's fire, And taught the world with reason to admire.”

World Reason Fire Taught Poet Critics Admire Generous

Author:Edgar Allan Poe

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