“Poetry is easier to learn than prose. Once you have learned it you can use it as a light and a laser. It shows up your true situation and it helps you cut through it.” HelpingUseShowsLightPoetrySituationCuttingEasierProsePoetry IsLasers Author:Jeanette Winterson
“As a direct line to human feeling, empathic experience, genuine language and detail, poetry is everything that headline news is not. It takes us inside situations, helps us imagine life from more than one perspective, honors imagery and metaphor - those great tools of thought - and deepens our confidence in a meaningful world.” WorldHumansHelpingFeelingsPoetryLanguageLinesSituationImaginePerspectiveHonorNewsToolsDirectMetaphorDetailsMeaningfulGenuinePoetry IsImageryHeadlines Author:Naomi Shihab Nye
“Poetry is that magic which consists in awakening sensations with the help of a combination of sounds ... that sorcery by which ideas are necessarily communicated to us, in a definite way, by words which nevertheless do not express them.” WayArtIdeasHelpingPoetrySoundMagicAwakeningCombinationPoetry IsSensationsNeverthelessDefiniteSorcery Author:John Banville
“Let my muse Fail of thy former helps, and only use Her inadulterate strength. What's done by me Hereafter shall smell of the lamp, not thee.” DoneHelpingUsePoetryFailingPoetWineSmellFormerTheeMuseLampsHereafter Author:Robert Herrick
“Those blessed structures, plot and rhyme-- why are they no help to me now I want to make something imagined, not recalled?” WantHelpingPoetryPoetBlessedStructurePlotRhyme Book:Robert Lowell: a tribute Source: Robert Lowell: a tribute
“Ah, love, let us be true To one another! for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night.” WorldLifeHelpingDreamLightSeemsTruthPainBeautifulJoyLyingPoetryNightHopeStruggleLandArmyVariousIgnorantFlightBeing TrueConfusedAlarmsClashCertitude Author:Matthew Arnold
“A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape of the universe, helps to extend everyone's knowledge of himself and the world around him.” WorldWritingHas BeensArtHelpingRealityPoetryUniverseCreativityShapesContribution Book:On the Air with Dylan Thomas: The Broadcasts Source: On the Air with Dylan Thomas: The Broadcasts
“First they came for the Jews, but I did nothing because I'm not a Jew. Then they came for the socialists, but I did nothing because I'm not a socialist. Then they came for the Catholics, but I did nothing because I'm not a Catholic. Finally, they came for me, but by then there was no one left to help me.” FirstsHelpingPoetryLeftLibertyCatholicJewLibertarianIndifferenceHelp MeCowardiceLibertarianismSocialistNaziPastorTheologianInactionLibertarian PartyArresting Author:Martin Niemoller
“You don't help people in your poems. I've been trying to help people all my life - that's my trouble” PeopleTryingHelpingPoetryTroublePoetic Author:Charles Olson
“The truth is... everything counts. Everything. Everything we do and everything we say. Everything helps or hurts; everything adds to or takes away from someone else.” HelpingTruthActionPoetryHurtInfluenceTruth IsAddAfrican AmericanCounting Author:Countee Cullen