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Poet Quotes

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Poet Quotes

“I think that is where poetry reading becomes such an individual thing. I mean I have friend who like poets who just don't say anything to me at all, I mean they seem to me rather ordinary and pedestrian.”

Thinking Mean Seems Reading Individual Poet Ordinary Say Anything Pedestrians Poetry Reading

Author:James Laughlin

“Maeterlinck says that compared with ordinary truths mystic truths have strange privileges - they can neither age nor die. Beauty is eternal and ugliness, thank God, is ephemeral. Can there be any question as to which should attract the poet?”

Should Age Dies Strange Poet Eternal Ordinary Privilege Thank God Ugliness Mystic Ephemeral

Author:Florence Earle Coates

“On every full moon, rituals ... take place on hilltops, beaches, in open fields and in ordinary houses. Writers, teachers, nurses, computer programmers, artists, lawyers, poets, plumbers, and auto mechanics -- women and men from many backgrounds come together to celebrate the mysteries of the Triple Goddess of the Dance of Life. The religion they practice is called Witchcraft.”

Source: Spiral Dance: Slipcase

“the ordinary man's experience is chaotic, irregular, fragmentary. [He] falls in love or reads Spinoza, and these two experiences have nothing to do with each other, or with the noise of the typewriter, or the smell of cooking; in the mind of the poet these experiences are always forming new wholes”

Men Mind Art Two Poetry Fall Poet Ordinary Cooking Falling In Love Smell Noise Chaotic Typewriters Ordinary Man Spinoza

Book:The Sacred Wood and Major Early Essays

Source: The Sacred Wood and Major Early Essays

“Neither men, nor gods, nor booksellers' shelves permit ordinary poets to exist. [Lat., Mediocribus esse poetis Non homines, non di, non concessere columnae.]”

Men Poet Ordinary Permit Shelves Booksellers

Author:Horace

“I am an ordinary human being who is impelled to write poetry. ... I still do feel that a poet has a duty to words, and that words can do wonderful things, and it's too bad to just let them lie there without doing anything with and for them.”

Feels Writing Humans Stills Lying Can Do Human Beings Wonderful Poet Duty Ordinary Wonderful Things

Author:Gwendolyn Brooks

“Language becomes a prison house only poets can escape...if we do not reject any strict distinctions between ordinary usage and figures of speech.”

Ifs House Language Figures Poet Speech Ordinary Prison Distinction Rejects Strict Usage Figures Of Speech

Author:Arthur Quinn

“In pursuing certain virtues - colorful local effects, personae and personality, juxtaposition, close calls with nonsense, uncertainty, critiques of ordinary language - the current crop of American poets necessarily give up on others.”

Source: Close Calls with Nonsense: Reading New Poetry

“There should be a law that no ordinary newspaper should be allowed to write about art. The harm they do by their foolish and random writing it would be impossible to overestimate--not to the artist but to the public.... Without them we would judge a man simply by his work; but at present the newspapers are trying hard to induce the public to judge a sculptor, for instance, never by his statues but by the way he treats his wife; a painter by the amount of his income and a poet by the colour of his necktie.”

Source: The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays

“Poetry is the most direct and simple means of expressing oneself in words: the most primitive nations have poetry, but only quitewell developed civilizations can produce good prose. So don't think of poetry as a perverse and unnatural way of distorting ordinary prose statements: prose is a much less natural way of speaking than poetry is. If you listen to small children, and to the amount of chanting and singsong in their speech, you'll see what I mean.”

“There are ancient and modern poems which breathe, in their entirety and in every detail, the divine breath of irony. In such poemsthere lives a real transcendental buffoonery. Their interior is permeated by the mood which surveys everything and rises infinitely above everything limited, even above the poet's own art, virtue, and genius; and their exterior form by the histrionic style of an ordinary good Italian buffo.”

“For sure I once thought of myself as the poet who would save the ordinary from oblivion.”

Sea Poet Ordinary Oblivion

Book:So ask: essays, conversations, and interviews

Source: So ask: essays, conversations, and interviews

“Ordinary life was laced with miracles, I knew that, had read enough poetry to understand that we are elevated with the knowing, and yet it was difficult to notice and be grateful when one was continually fatigued and irritated. I suppose that unquenchable sense of wonder is what separates us dolts from the saints and the poets.”

Enough Difficult Wonder Knowing Poet Ordinary Miracle Grateful Saint Be Grateful Ordinary Life Irritated Sense Of Wonder

Author:Jane Hamilton

“Poets are like steam valves, where the ordinary feelings of ordinary people can escape and be shown.”

People Feelings Poet Ordinary Ordinary People Steam Valve

Author:Sharon Olds

“And poets, in my view, and I think the view of most people, do speak God's language - it's better, it's finer, it's language on a higher plane than ordinary people speak in their daily lives.”

People Thinking Speak Language Views Poet Higher Ordinary Planes Daily Life Ordinary People

Author:Stephen King