Best poet & political Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“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

“The poet has to make a synthesis out of the moral life of our time, and this life is lived at this moment on a political plane.”

Moments Political Life Is Moral Poet This Life Planes Our Time Synthesis Moral Life

Author:Rose Macaulay

“The storyteller and poet of our time, as in any other time, must be an entertainer of the spirit in the full sense of the word, not just a preacher of social or political ideals. There is no paradise for bored readers and no excuse for tedious literature that does not intrigue the reader, uplift him, give him the joy and the escape that true art always grants.”

Source: The collected stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer

“Literary men are being employed to praise a big business man personally, as men used to praise a king. They not only find political reasons for the commercial schemes that they have done for some time past they also find moral defences for the commercial schemers... I do resent the whole age of patronage being revived under such absurd patrons; and all poets becoming court poets, under kings that have taken no oath.”

“A poet, qua poet, has only one political duty, namely, in his own writing to set an example of the correct use of his mother tongue, which is always being corrupted. When words lose their meaning, physical force takes over.”

Writing Use Political Mother Force Loses Example Poet Duty Tongue Mother Tongue Physical Force

Author:W. H. Auden

“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

“The government of the United States, under Lyndon Johnson, proposes to concern itself over the quality of American life. And this is something very new in the political theory of free nations. The quality of life has heretofore depended on the quality of the human beings who gave tone to that life, and they were its priests and its poets, not its bureaucrats.”

“There's a sameness about American poetry that I don't think represents the whole people. It represents a poetry of the moment, a poetry of evasion, and I have problems with this. I believe poetry has always been political, long before poets had to deal with the page and white space . . . it's natural.”

People Thinking Believe Long Whole Moments Problem Political I Believe Natural Space White Deals Poet Pages Sameness Evasion American Poetry This I Believe White Space

Author:Yusef Komunyakaa

“You can judge the moral bearing of a political system, a political institution, a political man by the degree of danger they attach to the fact of being observed through the eyes of a satiric poet.”

Men Facts Eye Political Moral Danger Poet Judging Degrees Institutions Political Systems Through The Eyes Political Institutions

Author:Roque Dalton

“There are poets who believe that you shouldn't engage at all in any cause. And there's something to be said for that. Because you don't want to - I think most political poetry is very bad. And it's very bad because you know too much to start with. You have a sense that you're right, and you're trying to tell other people what's right. And I think that's always kind of fundamentalism, and I don't like it.”

People Thinking Knows Want Trying Believe Kind Said Political Causes Too Much Poet Poetry Is Fundamentalism

Author:W. S. Merwin

“In America it's a particular problem. The artist, particularly the poet, is just unacknowledged; if I can use that dumb word. Maybe it has always been that way. Maybe the only way he or she can be acknowledged is to be connected with some movement, be it religious or political.”

Ifs Way I Can Use Problem America Political Artist Religious Movement Particular Poet Connected Dumb

Author:Gerald Stern

“We're certainly not perfect, and we're not probably even better than anybody else, except that perhaps we are given to certain kinds of contemplation that provide a valuable balance to the knee-jerk reactionary behavior of most of our newspapers and political leaders. Poets are great doubters.”

Kind Political Certain Given Perfect Leader Poet Balance Behavior Valuable Newspapers Knees Contemplation Not Perfect Jerk Reactionaries Political Leaders Doubters

Author:Sam Hamill

“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.”

“I'm of the opinion that poetry is always political, and cannot help but be so, regardless of the poet's intent, given that refusing to deal in politics is in itself a political act.”

Helping Political Given Deals Opinion Poet Poetry Is

Author:Andre Naffis-Sahely

“To be a political poet means simply to be a poet, and any poet worth their salt will be a political animal in their own peculiar way - they have no choice: politics is one of the many fragments we thread into the tapestry of the poem.”

Way Mean Political Choices Animal Poet Peculiar Salt Thread Fragments Tapestry Political Animals

Author:Andre Naffis-Sahely

“The real question should be: what makes a good political poem? The possible answers to that question are both obvious and yet still a little too subjective for anyone to ever fully agree on. What do I most wish to see in a political poet? Sublimated rebellion.”

Should Littles Stills Real Political Wish Answers Poet Agree Obvious Rebellion Subjective Real Questions Good Political

Author:Andre Naffis-Sahely

“The problem with describing poets as legislators is that at that level of politics - politics as political invention - poets have no special skills and are not apt to.”

Problem Political Levels Special Poet Skills Invention Describing Legislators

Author:Robert Hass

“If you look at the recent Nobel Prize winners, one couldn't say that the work didn't matter and the political commitment did. Who had ever heard of the Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz? He is not politically involved. Octavio Paz is a great poet, also not politically involved. The Nobel Prize is for literature, for the quality of work over the years.”

Ifs Years Looks Matter Political Literature Quality Heard Poet Involved Commitment Winner Prize Nobel Nobel Prize Egyptian Great Poet Quality Work Nobel Prize Winners

Author:Nadine Gordimer

“Those of us who work in politics can only make ourselves useful if our heads are filled with things that we can contribute to the political space. JFK had this quote about how if more politicians knew poetry and more poets knew about politics, the world would be a better place. Being attentive to the things that add meaning to our lives alongside politics will help us inform our politics with the values that really do make America great.”

World Helping Political Values Poet Politician

Author:Peter Buttigieg

“One of the appeals of William Carlos Williams to me is that he was many different kinds of poet. He tried out many different forms in his own way of, more or less, formlessness. He was also a poet who could be - he was a love poet, he was a poet of the natural order and he was also a political poet.”

Kind Different Political Natural Poet Different Kinds

Author:W. S. Di Piero

“Because so many poets have chosen a political idiom right now in the US and so many poets have assigned value and inherent knowledge to their racial identity and used that as a form of argumentation, I'm thinking now's a good time to buy low for my own poems and write poems that are deeply in the interior and the psyche. There are plenty of people out there working on subjects of political poetry, partisan poetry, all the way through to crossing the threshold of propaganda. I start thinking now's a good time for me to start writing about the myths of my own psyche.”

People Thinking Writing Political Values Identity Poet Myth Chosen Plenty Propaganda Good Times Idiom

Author:David Biespiel

“There's not a big range in the political poetry of the last year, or not a political range. On the one hand, no poet that I know of who writes in English in the United States is anything but a humanist. So all poets, including myself, seem to be under that umbrella. We just don't have Rush Limbaugh poets, Ann Coulter poets.”

Writing Political Poet Humanist Umbrella

Author:David Biespiel

“I think that all my books are political, I think that I have a political body of work. I am essentially a political woman, but above all I am a poet. I am a poetess.”

Thinking Book Political Poet

Author:Maria Teresa Horta

“The courage of the poet is to keep ajar the door that leads into madness.”

Art Political Poetry Courage Doors Poet Madness Bravery Poetry Is Poetry By Poets

Book:Forty-four Essays by Christopher Morley

Source: Forty-four Essays by Christopher Morley

“I've never read a political poem that's accomplished anything. Poetry makes things happen, but rarely what the poet wants.”

Want Happens Political Literature Poet Things Happen Accomplished Make Things Happen

Author:Howard Nemerov

“As a poet, there is only one political duty, and that is to defend one's language from corruption.”

Political Language Poet Duty Corruption

Author:W. H. Auden

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