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Poetry Quotes

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Poetry Quotes

“Poetry is concerned with using with abusing, with losing with wanting, with denying with avoiding with adoring with replacing the noun. It is doing that always doing that, doing that and doing nothing but that. Poetry is doing nothing but using losing refusing and pleasing and betraying and caressing nouns. That is what poetry does, that is what poetry has to do no matter what kind of poetry it is. And there are a great many kinds of poetry.”

KindDoeMatterPoetryPoetLosingConcernedNo Matter WhatGreat MenPoetry IsBetrayAvoidingDoing NothingNouns
Book:Writings, 1903-1932: Q.E.D., Three lives, Portraits and other short works, The autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
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“That the mere matter of a poem, for instance--its subject, its given incidents or situation; that the mere matter of a picture--the actual circumstances of an event, the actual topography of a landscape--should be nothing without the form, the spirit of the handling, that this form, this mode of handling, should become an end in itself, should penetrate every part of the matter;Mthis is what all art constantly strives after, and achieves in different degrees.”

ShouldArtDifferentEndsMatterFormSpiritPoetryGivenSituationAchieveSubjectsEventsPoetCircumstancesDegreesUnityMereStriveInstanceLandscapeStrifePenetrateIncidentsTopography
Author:Walter Pater
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“The difference between prose logic and poetic thought is simple. The logician uses words as a builder uses bricks, for the unemotional deadness of his academic prose; and is always coining newer, deader words with a natural preference for Greek formations. The poet avoids the entire vocabulary of logic unless for satiric purposes, and treats words as living creatures with a preference for those with long emotional histories dating from mediaeval times. Poetry at its purest is, indeed, a defiance of logic.”

LongUsePoetryPurposeNaturalDifferencesSimpleEmotionalPoetCreaturesLogicTreatsDatingGreekProsePoeticAcademicVocabularyPreferenceBricksFormationDefianceBuilderLiving CreaturesUnemotionalTime Poetry
Book:Some speculations on literature, history, and religion
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“The interpretations of science do not give us this intimate sense of objects as the interpretations of poetry give it; they appeal to a limited faculty, and not to the whole man. It is not Linnaeus or Cavendish or Cuvier who gives us the true sense of animals, or water, or plants, who seizes their secret for us, who makes us participate in their life; it is Shakspeare [sic] … Wordsworth … Keats … Chateaubriand … Senancour.”

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Book:Essays in Criticism
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“Printed prose is historically a most peculiar, almost an aberrant way of telling stories, and by far the most inherently anesthetic: It is the only medium of art I can think of which appeals directly to none of our five senses. The oral and folk tradition in narrative made use of verse or live-voice dynamics, embellished by gesture and expression--a kind of rudimentary theater--as do the best raconteurs of all times. Commonly there was musical accompaniment as well: a kind of one-man theater-of-mixed-means.”

ThinkingMenWayWellsKindMeanArtMadeI CanStoriesUsePoetryVoiceFivePoetExpressionTraditionTheaterMusicalFolksSensesMediumsAll TimeAppealsNarrativeProseOne ManPeculiarGesturesVersesDo The BestPrintedTelling StoriesDynamicsFive SensesAnesthetics
Book:The Friday Book: Essays and Other Nonfiction
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“Everywhere we are told that our human resources are all to be used, that our civilization itself means the uses of everything it has - the inventions, the histories, every scrap of fact. But there is one kind of knowledge - infinitely precious, time-resistant more than monuments, here to be passed between the generations in any way it may be: never to be used. And that is poetry.”

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Author:Muriel Rukeyser
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“The great charm of poetry consists in lively pictures of the sublime passions, magnanimity, courage, disdain of fortune; or thoseof the tender affections, love and friendship; which warm the heart, and diffuse over it similar sentiments and emotions.”

HeartPoetryPassionEmotionPoetFortuneAffectionWarmCharmOver ItSentimentsSublimeLivelyDisdainLove And FriendshipMagnanimity
Book:Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects
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“It is not possible, for a poet, writing in any language, to protect himself from the tragic elements in human life.... [ellipsis in source] Illness, old age, and death--subjects as ancient as humanity--these are the subjects that the poet must speak of very nearly from the first moment that he begins to speak.”

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Author:Louise Bogan
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“Poetic experience is distinct in nature from mystical experience. Because poetry emanates from the free creativity of the spirit,it is from the very start oriented toward expression, and terminates in a word proffered, it wants to speak; whereas mystical because it emanates from the deepest longing of the spirit bent on knowing, tends of itself toward silence and internal fruition. Poetic experience is busy with the created world and the enigmatic and innumerable relations of existents with one another, not with the Principle of Being.”

WorldWantSpiritPoetrySpeakSilencePrinciplesCreativityKnowingPoetExpressionRelationLongingBusyInternalsPoeticMysticalBentFruitionEmanateEnigmaticMystical Experiences
Author:Jacques Maritain
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“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.”

IfsThinkingWayMeanChildrenPoetryNationsNaturalSimpleProducePoetAmountCivilizationSpeechOrdinaryDirectOneselfStatementsProsePoetry IsPrimitiveUnnaturalSmall ChildChantingExpressing Oneself
Author:Northrop Frye
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