Best poet & poetry Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings Page 2

“Men of real talents in Arms have commonly approved themselves patrons of the liberal arts and friends to the poets, of their own as well as former times. In some instances by acting reciprocally, heroes have made poets, and poets heroes.”

Men Wells Art Made Real Poetry Acting Talent Poet Arms Hero Instance Former Approved Patron Liberal Arts Real Talent

Book:George Washington Remembers: Reflections on the French and Indian War

Source: George Washington Remembers: Reflections on the French and Indian War

“Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.”

Pain Joy Poetry Deals Wonder Poet Poetry Is Dictionary Great Poetry Joy And Pain Reading Poetry Poetry Reading

Book:The New Frontier and Sand and Foam

Source: The New Frontier and Sand and Foam

“'Therefore' is a word the poet must not know.”

Knows Poetry Poet Sarcastic Poetic

Author:Andre Gide

“The white light of truth, in traversing the many sided transparent soul of the poet, is refracted into iris-hued poetry.”

Soul Light Poetry White Poet Transparent White Light Irises

Book:Essays: Moral, Political and Aesthetic

Source: Essays: Moral, Political and Aesthetic

“A poet is wounded into speech, and he examines these wounds, meticulously, to discover how to heal them. The bad poet harangues at the pain and yowls at the weapons that lacerate him; the great poet explores the inflamed lips of ruined flesh with ice-caked fingers, glittering and precise; but ultimately his poem is the echoing, dual voice reporting the damages.”

Pain Poetry Voice Poet Speech Weapons Fingers Lips Flesh Wounds Heal Ice Damage Wounded Precise Ruined Great Poet

Author:Samuel R. Delany

“Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It's that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that's what the poet does.”

Thinking World Doe Lying Poetry Night Time Literature Lines Party Poet Expression Bed Poetry Is Poetry By Famous Poets Poetry By Poets What Is Poetry

Author:Allen Ginsberg

“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

“Once I started writing all the time and interacting with poets, I made a conscious decision to identify myself as a poet. It's funny how much a single word can provide focus and direction. As soon as I claimed that identity, I started clearing more and more space for poetry in my life and applying poetic tools to other areas of my life. The world became a different place, and I witnessed it through different kinds of eyes.”

World Writing Kind Made Different Eye Poetry Space Decision Focus Identity Poet Conscious Areas Tools Poetic Different Kinds Different Place Interacting Clearing Single Word

Author:Tracy K. Smith

“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

“A poet is a man who puts up a ladder to a star and climbs it while playing a violin.”

Men Poetry Stars Poet Climbs Ladders Violin

Author:Edmond de Goncourt

“Isn't it curious how one has only to open a book of verse to realise immediately that it was written by a very fine poet, or else that it was written by someone who is not a poet at all. In the case of the former, the lines, the images, though they are inherent in each other, leap up and give one this shock of delight. In the case of the latter, they lie flat on the page, never having lived.”

Giving Book Lying Poetry Lines Cases Written Poet Fine Pages Delight Curious Former Shock Latter Flats Leap Realising Inherent Verses

Author:Edith Sitwell

“for what is the gift of the poet and the artist except to see the sights which others cannot see and to hear the sounds that others cannot hear?”

Art Poetry Artist Sound Poet Sight

Book:Bimbi: Stories for Children

Source: Bimbi: Stories for Children

“All things can tempt me from this craft of verse: One time it was a woman's face, or worse-- The seeming needs of my fool-driven land; Now nothing but comes readier to the hand Than this accustomed toil.”

Needs Hands Faces Poetry Land Youth Poet Fool All Things Driven Crafts Distraction One Time Verses Toil Accustomed Seeming

Book:Poems of William Butler Yeats

Source: Poems of William Butler Yeats

“Women have burnt like beacons in all the works of all the poets from the beginning of time.”

Poetry Poet Beacons Beacons Of Light

Book:Selected Works of Virginia Woolf

Source: Selected Works of Virginia Woolf

“Poetry is poetry, and one's objective as a poet is to achieve poetry precisely as one's objective in music is to achieve music.”

Poetry Achieve Poet Music Is Objectives Poetry Is

Book:Opus Posthumous: Poems, Plays, Prose

Source: Opus Posthumous: Poems, Plays, Prose

“I do not suppose that anyone not a poet can realize the agony of creating a poem. Every nerve, even every muscle, seems strained to the breaking point. The poem will not be denied; to refuse to write it would be a greater torture. It tears its way out of the brain, splintering and breaking its passage, and leaves that organ in the state of a jelly-fish when the task is done.”

Way Writing States Done Seems Would Be Poetry Realizing Brain Greater Tears Poet Creating Tasks Fishes Refuse Torture Muscles Nerves Passages Denied Organs Agony Jelly Point Break

Author:Amy Lowell

“I do not think [poetry] is more, or less, necessary than food, shelter, health, education, decent working conditions. It is as necessary.”

Thinking Poetry Conditions Poet Decent Poetry Is Shelter Health Education Working Conditions

Book:What Is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics (Expanded Edition)

Source: What Is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics (Expanded Edition)

“The necessity of poetry has to be stated over and over, but only to those who have reason to fear its power, or those who still believe that language is 'only words' and that an old language is good enough for our descriptions of the world we are trying to transform.”

World Trying Believe Stills Reason Enough Poetry Language Poet Description Good Enough Social Change

Book:On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose 1966-1978

Source: On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose 1966-1978

“The truth, it seems, is not just what you find when you open a door: it is itself a door, which the poet is always on the verge of going through.”

Seems Truth Poetry Doors Poet Verge

Book:Second words: selected critical prose

Source: Second words: selected critical prose

“For a poet, making poems is a way of viewing the world, being in the world, breathing.”

World Way Poetry Poet Breathing

Book:Saturday's Child: A Memoir

Source: Saturday's Child: A Memoir

“The poet should try to give his poem the quiet swiftness of flame, so that the reader will feel and not think while he is reading. But the thinking will come afterwards.”

Thinking Giving Feels Should Trying Poetry Reading Poet Reader Quiet Flames Swiftness

Author:Sara Teasdale

“My theory is that poems are written because of a state of emotional irritation. It may be present for some time before the poet is conscious of what is tormenting him. The emotional irritation springs, probably, from subconscious combinations of partly forgotten thoughts and feelings. Coming together, like electrical currents in a thunder storm, they produce a poem. ... the poem is written to free the poet from an emotional burden.”

Source: Mirror of the Heart: Poems of Sara Teasdale

“A poet is a combination of an instrument and a human being in one person, with the former gradually taking over the latter. The sensation of this takeover is responsible for timbre; the realization of it, for destiny.”

Humans Persons Poetry Human Beings Destiny Poet Responsible Instruments Realization Former Combination Latter Sensations Takeovers Timbre

Book:Less Than One: Selected Essays

Source: Less Than One: Selected Essays

“Though we do not have many poets, we certainly have more than we deserve, for we deserve none at all. It is ourselves that we are hurting by our stupidity and ignorance of poetry.”

Poetry Hurt Ignorance Poet Deserve Stupidity Stupidity And Ignorance

Author:Elizabeth Janeway

“I tell poets that when a line just floats into your head, don't pay attention 'cause it probably has floated into somebody else's head.”

Poetry Causes Lines Pay Attention Poet Pay Attention Floats

Author:Gwendolyn Brooks

“The earnings of a poet could be reckoned by a metaphysician rather than a bookkeeper.”

Poetry Poet Earning Bookkeepers

Book:Alms for Oblivion

Source: Alms for Oblivion

“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

“Poems are taught as though the poet has put a secret key in his words and it is the reader's job to find it. Poems are not mystery novels.”

Jobs Poetry Secret Novel Mystery Taught Poet Keys Reader Mystery Novels

Book:Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within

Source: Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within

“The poem is always the last resort. In it the poet makes a world in little, and finds peace, even though, under complete focused emotion, the evocation be far more bitter than reality, or far more lovely.”

World Littles Reality Lasts Poetry Emotion Poet Focused Lovely Bitter Resorts Finding Peace

Book:Journey around my room: the autobiography of Louise Bogan : a mosaic

Source: Journey around my room: the autobiography of Louise Bogan : a mosaic

“The poets have familiarized more people with history than have the historians.”

People Poetry History Poet Historian

Author:Barbara Tuchman

“Poetry and preaching do not go well together; when the preacher mounts the pulpit the poet usually goes away.”

Wells Together Poetry Poet Preacher Preaching Pulpit

Book:The Roman Way to Western Civilization

Source: The Roman Way to Western Civilization

“The reason modern poetry is difficult is so that the poet's wife cannot understand it.”

Reason Poetry Difficult Wife Modern Poet Poetry Is Modern Poetry

Author:Wendy Cope

“20th century poetry is a piñata. Images break from the earth when the poet strikes it.”

Earth Poetry Break Century Poet Strikes Poetry Is 20th Century

Author:Diane Glancy

“Poetry examines an emotional truth. It's an experience filtered through the personality of the poet. We look to poetry for visions, not scientific truths. The poet's job is to combine new elements. Explore their melting, seeping into one another.”

Looks Jobs Poetry Vision Emotional Poet Personality Elements Melting Scientific Truth

Book:Claiming Breath

Source: Claiming Breath

“poets are privileged to utter more than they can always quite explain, bringing up from the mind's unplumbed depths tokens of the nature of the world we carry within us.”

World Mind Poetry Poet Depth Privileged Tokens

Author:Vernon Lee

“Who, except the poets, reads poetry?”

Poetry Poet

Author:Babette Deutsch

“I believe that poets have to be inside their poems somewhere, or the poem won't work.”

Believe Poetry I Believe Poet

Book:The spiral of memory: interviews

Source: The spiral of memory: interviews

“For a poet, style is the only morality.”

Poetry Style Poet Morality

Author:Jennifer Stone

“Poetry colors beings, objects, landscapes and sensations with a kind of new and particular light, which is in fact that of the poet's emotions.”

Kind Facts Light Poetry Emotion Objects Particular Color Poet Landscape Sensations

Book:Poems

Source: Poems

“we are far too used to the assumption that poetry and poets will be there when we want them, no matter how long they have been ignored, taken for granted, misused. After all, isn't poetry a form of prophecy, and aren't prophets known for their talent for flourishing in inhospitable deserts and other bleak surroundings? Maybe. But maybe not indefinitely.”

Source: A movement of poets: thoughts on poetry and feminism

“Poetry's unnat'ral; no man ever talked poetry 'cept a beadle on boxin' day, or Warren's blackin' or Rowland's oil, or some o' them low fellows; never you let yourself down to talk poetry, my boy.”

Men Funny Poetry Boys Poet Lows Humorous Fellows Oil My Boys

Author:Charles Dickens

“The job of the poet (a job which can't be learned) consists of placing those objects of the visible world which have become invisible due to the glue of habit, in an unusual position which strikes the soul and gives them a tragic force.”

World Giving Art Soul Jobs Poetry Force Position Objects Poet Habit Dues Strikes Invisible Visible Tragic Unusual Glue

Author:Jean Cocteau

“Most poets who have little or nothing to say are concerned primarily with the way in which they say it ... if it is true that the style of a poem and the poem itself are one, ... it may be ... that the poets who have little or nothing to say are, or will be, the poets that matter.”

Ifs Way May Littles Art Matter Poetry Style Poet Concerned

Book:Collected Poetry and Prose

Source: Collected Poetry and Prose

“So we start with an oversignifying reader. Those texts that appear to reward this reader for this additional investment - text that we find exceptionally suggestive, apposite, or musical - are usually adjudged to be 'poetic'. ... The work of the poet is to contribute a text that will firstly invite such a reading; and secondly reward such a reading.”

Art Poetry Reading Poet Reader Investment Rewards Musical Poetic Invites

Author:Don Paterson

“When oxygen and sulphur dioxide are mixed in the presence of a filiament of platinum, they form sulphurous acid. This combination takes place only if the platinum is present; nevertheless the newly formed acid contains no trace of platinum, and the platinum itself is apparently unaffected: has remained inert, neutral, and unchanged. The mind of the poet is the shred of platinum.”

Ifs Mind Art Form Poetry Poet Combination Nevertheless Oxygen Acid Platinum

Book:Selected essays

Source: Selected essays

“As far as I can tell, there are two kinds of poets: those who want to tell stories and sing songs, and those who want to work out the chemical equation for language and pass on their experiments as poetry.”

Want Kind Art I Can Two Stories Poetry Song Language Poet Work Out Experiments Chemicals Equations

Author:Simon Armitage

“A poet's work consists less in seeking words for his ideas than in seeking ideas for his words and predominant rhythms.”

Art Ideas Poetry Poet Seeking Rhythm

Author:Paul Valery

“Two opposing forces inhabit the poem: one of elevation or up-rooting, which pulls the word from the language: the other of gravity, which makes it return. The poem is an original and unique creation, but it is also reading and recitation: participation. The poet creates it; the people, by recitation, re-create it. Poet and reader are two moments of a single reality.”

Source: The Bow and the Lyre: The Poem, The Poetic Revelation, Poetry and History

“One way or another, all the poets of the thirties and forties reacted to Auden, either by rejecting him or trying to absorb him.”

Way Trying Poetry Literature Poet One Way Forty Rejecting Auden

Book:Poetry Notebook: 2006–2014

Source: Poetry Notebook: 2006–2014

“I've learned that my readings of others' work often has little connection to their intentions. This doesn't mean that my response is wrong, and it doesn't make the author's views less right. Poets, like their poems, are "hopeful monsters".”

Mean Littles Poetry Reading Literature Views Poet Connections Intention Response Monsters I've Learned Hopeful

Book:Feeling as a Foreign Language: The Good Strangeness of Poetry

Source: Feeling as a Foreign Language: The Good Strangeness of Poetry

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