Best poet & play Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“You are the song of every bird, you are the poet's every word, every artist's picture, every writer's play.”

“More than any other contemporary British playwright, Tom Stoppard populates his plays -- from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead to The Invention of Love (his portrait of the poet and scholar A. E. Housman) -- with characters from life and literature. But one cannot always tell the difference between those who are real and those who are imaginary.”

Real Play Character Literature Differences Poet British Invention Contemporary Scholar Imaginary Toms Portraits Playwright Rosencrantz And Guildenstern

Author:Mel Gussow

“Had there been no Renaissance and no Italian influence to bring in the stories of other lands English history would, it may be, have become as important to the English imagination as the Greek Myths to the Greek imagination; and many plays by many poets would have woven it into a single story whose contours, vast as those of Greek myth, would have made living men and women seem like swallows building their nests under the architrave of some Temple of the Giants.”

Source: The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Volume IV: Early Essays

“Poetry is a bad medium for philosophy. Everything in the philosophical poem has to satisfy irreconcilable requirements: for instance, the last demand that we should make of philosophy (that it be interesting) is the first we make of a poem; the philosophical poet has an elevated and methodical, but forlorn and absurd air as he works away at his flying tank, his sewing-machine that also plays the piano.”

Should Firsts Philosophy Play Lasts Interesting Air Poet Demand Machines Philosophical Flying Absurd Mediums Instance Piano Poetry Is Requirements Tanks Sewing Forlorn Methodical

Author:Randall Jarrell

“I was twenty-nine years old and I wasn't a very good poet and I wasn't a very good novelist, [so] I thought I would try writing a play, which seems to have worked out a little better.”

Writing Trying Years Littles Play Seems Poet Twenties Very Good Nine Novelists Nine Years

Book:Conversations with Edward Albee

Source: Conversations with Edward Albee

“At a time when pimpery, lick-spittlery, and picking the public's pocket are the order of the day - indeed, officially proclaimed as virtue - the poet must play the madcap to keep his balance. And ours.”

Play Order Virtue Poet Balance Pockets

Author:Studs Terkel

“I have always wanted to play different kinds of stuff, but it's hard, first to find good material, and then to change people's perception of you so they'll let you do it. I mean, I would really like to play a poet, but once they get this notion of you as a street guy, it's hard to change that.”

People Firsts Kind Mean Different Hard Play Wanted Guy Stuff Streets Poet Materials Perception Notion Different Kinds

Author:Matt Dillon

“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

“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

“For suppose that every tool we had could perform its task, either at our bidding or itself perceiving the need, and if-like the statues made by Dædalus or the tripods of Hephæstus, of which the poet says that "self-moved they enter the assembly of the gods" - shuttles in a loom could fly to and fro and a plectrum play a lyre all self-moved, then master-craftsmen would have no need of servants nor masters of slaves.”

Ifs Needs Made Self Play Politics Economy Poet Masters Tools Tasks Moved Slave Servant Liberalism Statues Assembly Craftsman Bidding Tripods

Author:Aristotle

“While the poet entertains he continues to search for eternal truths, for the essence of being. In his own fashion he tries to solve the riddle of time and change, to find an answer to suffering, to reveal love in the very abyss of cruelty and injustice. Strange as these words may sound I often play with the idea that when all the social theories collapse and wars and revolutions leave humanity in utter gloom, the poet--whom Plato banned from his Republic--may rise up to save us all.”

Source: Aspects of I.B. Singer

“The arts of speech are rhetoric and poetry. Rhetoric is the art of transacting a serious business of the understanding as if it were a free play of the imagination; poetry that of conducting a free play of the imagination as if it were a serious business of the understanding.”

Ifs Art Play Poetry Understanding Imagination Serious Poet Speech Rhetoric Conducting Serious Business Free Play

Book:Kant's Critiques

Source: Kant's Critiques

“Poets are political, they have to be reflections of their times [because] they're living in their times... Poetry is political in that it's standing in opposition to fascism. Good poetry asks a bunch of questions and asks the audience to interact with themselves or see themselves in it; maybe you like it or you don't like it. But the fascist sort of stuff plays on your fears and tells you to jump on the party line and gives some simple excuses - blame this person.”

Giving Persons Play Political Asks Stuff Lines Simple Party Audience Poet Reflection Standing Blame Excuse Bunch Opposition Poetry Is Fascism Fascists You Like It Good Poetry Time Poetry

Author:John Cusack

“When I was a kid I would write songs, little plays, and poetry in school. If you're an adult and you're a poet, it's all about love and pain, but if you're a kid it's, "Does anyone know a word that rhymes with shark?"”

Ifs Knows Writing Littles Doe Play Humor Kids School Funny Pain Song Poet Adults Rhyme Sharks Love And Pain

Author:Mike Birbiglia

“A poet is a poet, whether he rides in a Ford or on a donkey; a sage is a sage, whether he plays golf in New Jersey or bathes in the Ganges, or prays in the desert; and a fool is a fool, whether he be a maharaja or a president of a post-war republic.”

War Play President Poet Fool Praying Golf Posts Desert Republic Sage Jersey New Jersey Donkey Post War

Author:Ameen Rihani

“As playwrights, as poets, we have to look to ourselves, listen to our guts for the final answers about what changes to make. Everyone has advice about how to end your play differently. And it's not about right or wrong. At the end of the day, it's your baby and you know what's best.”

Knows Looks Ends Play Answers Advice Poet Baby Finals Guts The End Of The Day Playwright

Author:Stephen Karam

“I don't pretend to understand him, but I can enjoy him as a poet and comedian. I liked the idea of the eternal return. Sometimes I think that being on tour year after year is an eternal return; you play a certain club in Copenhagen and then ten years later you are back again, traveling the same roads year after year.”

Thinking Years I Can Ideas Sometimes Play Certain Enjoy Poet Return Ten Eternal Clubs Comedian Back Again Copenhagen

Author:Dean Wareham

“When I was fifteen I wrote seven hundred pages of an incredibly bad novel - it's a very funny book I still like a lot. Then, when I was nineteen I wrote a couple hundred pages of another novel, which wasn't very good either. I was still determined to be a writer. And since I was a writer, and here I was twenty-nine years old and I wasn't a very good poet and I wasn't a very good novelist, I thought I would try writing a play, which seems to have worked out a little better.”

Writing Trying Years Littles Stills Book Play Seems Novel Poet Couple Pages Hundred Twenties Seven Very Good Determined Nine Novelists Fifteen Nine Years Nineteen Funny Book

Book:Conversations with Edward Albee

Source: Conversations with Edward Albee

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