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Poet Quotes

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Poet Quotes

“When men and woman die, as poets sung, his heart's the last part moves, her last, the tongue.”

Men Heart Lasts Moving Dies Poet Tongue

Book:Poor Richard's Almanack

Source: Poor Richard's Almanack

“Reading one's own poems aloud is letting the cat out of the bag. You may have always suspected bits of a poem to be overweighted, overviolent, or daft, and then, suddenly, with the poet's tongue around them, your suspicion is made certain.”

May Made Certain Reading Bits Poet Cat Tongue Bags Suspicion Daft

Author:Dylan Thomas

“By mourning tongues The death of the poet was kept from his poems.”

Poet Tongue Mourning

Author:W. H. Auden

“Poets may boast (as safely-vain) Their work shall with the world remain: Both bound together, live, or die, The verses and the prophecy. But who can hope his lines shou'd long Last, in a daily changing tongue? While they are new, envy prevails, And as that dies, our language fails.”

World May Long Together Lasts Dies Language Lines Failing Poet Bounds Tongue Envy Vain Verses Prophecy Boast

Author:Edmund Waller

“Poets suffer occasional delusions of angelhood and find themselves condemned to express it in the bric-a-brac tongues of the human world. Lots of them go mad.”

World Humans Suffering Poet Mad Tongue Delusion Occasional Brics

Book:I, Lucifer: Finally, the Other Side of the Story

Source: I, Lucifer: Finally, the Other Side of the Story

“For centuries poets, some poets, have tried to give a voice to the animals, and readers, some readers, have felt empathy and sorrow. If animals did have voices, and they could speak with the tongues of angels-at the very least with the tongues of angels-they would be unable to save themselves from us. What good would language do? Their mysterious otherness has not saved them, nor have their beautiful songs and coats and skins and shells and eyes.”

Source: Ill Nature: Rants and Reflections on Humanity and Other Animals

“With mimicry, with praises, with echoes, or with answers, the poets have all but outsung the bell. The inarticulate bell has found too much interpretation, too many rhymes professing to close with her inaccessible utterance, and to agree with her remote tongue. The bell, like the bird, is a musician pestered with literature.”

Found Literature Answers Too Much Poet Musician Bird Praise Agree Tongue Interpretation Bells Echoes Rhyme Utterance Inaccessible Inarticulate Mimicry

Book:The Essential Alice Meynell Collection

Source: The Essential Alice Meynell Collection

“There is an old Arabic proverb, 'When the king puts the poet on his payroll, he cuts off the tongue of the poet', so throughout the ages, people in power have liked to control music, they used to throw songwriters in jail throughout history, and were assassinated.”

People Age Used Cutting Poet Kings Tongue Jail Songwriters Payroll

Author:Pete Seeger

“Of little use, the man you may suppose, Who says in verse what others say in prose; Yet let me show a poet's of some weight, And (though no soldier) useful to the state, What will a child learn sooner than a song? What better teach a foreigner the tongue? What's long or short, each accent where to place And speak in public with some sort of grace?”

Men May Children Littles Long States Use Shows Song Speak Teach Grace He Man Poet Weight Let Me Soldier Tongue Prose Verses Accents Foreigners

Book:An Essay on Man: And Other Poems

Source: An Essay on Man: And Other Poems

“But Thee, but Thee, O sovereign Seer of time, But Thee, O poets' Poet, Wisdom's Tongue, But Thee, O man's best Man, O love's best Love, O perfect life in perfect labor writ, O all men's Comrade, Servant, King, or Priest, -- What IF or YET, what mole, what flaw, what lapse, What least defect or shadow of defect, What rumor, tattled by an enemy, Of inference loose, what lack of grace Even in torture's grasp, or sleep's, or death's -- Oh, what amiss may I forgive in Thee, Jesus, good Paragon, Thou Crystal Christ?”

Source: Poems of Sidney Lanier

“This is what poems are: with mercy for the greedy, they are the tongue's wrangle, the world's pottage, the rat's star.”

World Poetry Stars Poet Mercy Tongue Rats Greedy

Book:Selected Poems of Anne Sexton

Source: Selected Poems of Anne Sexton

“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

“Every poet depends upon generations who wrote in his native tongue; he inherits styles and forms elaborated by those who lived before him. At the same time, though, he feels that those old means of expression are not adequate to his own experience.”

Feels Mean Form Generations Style Poet Expression Depends Tongue Native Adequate

Author:Czeslaw Milosz

“... Who alive can say 'Thou art no Poet - mayst not tell thy dreams'? Since every man whose soul is not a clod Hath visions, and would speak, if he had loved, And been well nurtured in his mother tongue.”

Ifs Men Wells Art Soul Dream Mother Speak Vision Alive Poet Tongue Every Man Mother Tongue

Book:The complete poetical works and letters of John Keats

Source: The complete poetical works and letters of John Keats

“Without those forerunners, Jane Austen and the Brontes and George Eliot could no more have written than Shakespeare could have written without Marlowe, or Marlowe without Chaucer, or Chaucer without those forgotten poets who paved the ways and tamed the natural savagery of the tongue. For masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice.”

Source: A Room of One's Own