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Poet Quotes

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Poet Quotes

“If the United States haven't grown poets, on any scale of grandeur, it is certain that they import, print, and read more poetry than any equal number of people elsewhere -- probably more than the rest of the world combined. Poetry (like a grand personality) is a growth of many generations -- many rare combinations. To have great poets, there must be great audiences too.”

Source: Delphi Complete Works of Walt Whitman (Illustrated)

“Imagism was a reductio ad absurdum of one or two tendencies of romanticism, such a beautifully and finally absurd one that it is hard to believe it existed as anything but a logical construction; and what imagist found it possible to go on writing imagist poetry? A number of poets have stopped writing entirely; others, like recurring decimals, repeat the novelties they commeced with, each time less valuably than before. And there are surrealist poetry, and political poetry, and all the othe refuges of the indigent.”

Writing Believe Two Hard Political Found Numbers Poet Goes On Absurd Tendencies Repeats Logical Ads Construction Refuge Novelty Romanticism Hard To Believe Recurring Surrealist Decimals

Author:Randall Jarrell

“People who stand near the water in the darkness are either lovers or poets. Or else ... one of that great gray number who've simply had it -- who throw in their hand and won't play anymore.”

People Play Hands Water Numbers Darkness Poet Lovers Gray

Author:Wolfgang Borchert

“[Rhyme is] but the invention of a barbarous age, to set off wretched matter and lame Meter; ... Not without cause therefore some both Italian and Spanish poets of prime note have rejected rhyme, ... as have also long since our best English tragedies, as... trivial and of no true musical delight; which [truly] consists only in apt numbers, fit quantity of syllables, and the sense variously drawn out from one verse into another, not in the jingling sound of like endings, a fault avoided by the learned ancients both in poetry and all good oratory.”

Long Matter Age Causes Sound Numbers Poet Fit Tragedy Faults Notes Musical Delight Invention Prime Italian Quantity Verses Rejected Rhyme Wretched Avoided Meter Lame Syllables Oratory

Author:John Milton

“What it 't to us, if taxes rise or fall, Thanks to our fortune, we pay none at all. Let muckworms who in dirty acres deal, Lament those hardships which we cannot feel, His grace who smarts, may bellow if he please, But must I bellow too, who sit at ease? By custom safe, the poets' numbers flow, Free as the light and air some years ago. No statesman e'er will find it worth his pains To tax our labours, and excise our brains. Burthens like these with earthly buildings bear, No tributes laid on castles in the air.”

Source: Poetical Works: With a Memoir by James L. Hannay and Copious Notes by W. Tooke

“Poetry, at all times, exercises two distinct functions: it may reveal, it may unveil to every eye, the ideal aspects of common thingsor it may actually add to the number of motives poetic and uncommon in themselves, by the imaginative creation of things that are ideal from their very birth.”

May Two Eye Poetry Imagination Common Numbers Creativity Creation Poet Birth Exercise Aspect Ideals Function Add All Time Motive Poetic Imaginative Uncommon

Author:Walter Pater

“No poet or novelist wishes he were the only one who ever lived, but most of them wish they were the only one alive, and quite a number fondly believe their wish has been granted.”

Life Writing Believe Has Beens Belief Wish Numbers Alive Poet Granted Novelists

Author:W. H. Auden

“In days of yore, the poet's pen From wing of bird was plunder'd, Perhaps of goose, but now and then, From Jove's own eagle sunder'd. But now, metallic pens disclose Alone the poet's numbers; In iron inspiration glows, Or with the poet slumbers.”

Inspiration Numbers Poet Bird Wings Iron Pens Now And Then Eagles Geese Slumber Plunder Metallic

Author:John Adams

“Has anyone...any distinct notion of what poets of a stronger age understood by the word inspiration? ... There is an ecstasy such that the immese strain of it is sometimes relaxed by a flood of tears, along with which one's steps either rush or involuntarily lag, alternately. There is the feeling that one is completely out of hand, with the very distinct consciousness of an endless number of fine thrills and quiverings to the very toes... Everything happens quite involuntarily, as if in a tempestuous outburst of freedom, of absoluteness, of power and divinity.”

“I read a lot. I liked a tremendous number of poets and writers. The person whose work I liked the most was Joyce.”

Persons Numbers Poet Joyce

Author:Grace Paley

“I just think that the world of workshops - I've written a poem that is a parody of workshop talk, I've written a poem that is a kind of parody of a garrulous poet at a poetry reading who spends an inordinate amount of time explaining the poem before reading it, I've written a number of satirical poems about other poets.”

Thinking World Kind Reading Numbers Written Poet Amount Explaining Workshops Parody Satirical Poetry Reading

Author:Billy Collins

“I wrote a number of poems about Kah Tai lagoon, when Safeway was building that huge, ugly store down there where I used to love to watch the birds nest. That political poem, or environmental poem, was unsuccessful because Safeway built there anyway. And yet the poem has something to say today, as it did then. And I speak here only of my own poems. The agenda for every poet has to be different because most of us write from direct human experience in the world.”