Best poetry & language Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“Poetry is the language of a state of crisis.”

States Poetry Language Poet Crisis Poetry Is

“The poets are the standard bearers of language. Their work lives or dies word by word. When I write and can hear a clunky sentence, I try to write up to the poetry that I have recited beforehand.”

Writing Trying Poetry Dies Language Poet Standards Sentences

Author:Janet Fitch

“Poetry is language surprised in the act of changing into meaning.”

Poetry Language Poetry Is

Book:Conversations with Stanley Kunitz

Source: Conversations with Stanley Kunitz

“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

“Poetry reminds us of the truths about life and human nature that we knew all along, but forgot somehow because they weren't yet in memorable language.”

Humans Poetry Language Human Nature Memorable Truth About Life

Book:Deep Play

Source: Deep Play

“poetry is where the language is renewed.”

Poetry Language Poetry Is

Author:Margaret Atwood

“The three ingredients of poetry: the mystery of the universe, spiritual curiosity, the energy of language.”

Spiritual Poetry Universe Three Energy Language Mystery Curiosity Ingredients

Book:Blue Pastures

Source: Blue Pastures

“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.”

World Humans Helping Feelings Poetry Language Lines Situation Imagine Perspective Honor News Tools Direct Metaphor Details Meaningful Genuine Poetry Is Imagery Headlines

Author:Naomi Shihab Nye

“Poetry is language in orbit.”

Art Poetry Language Poetry Is Orbit

Book:Finders Keepers: Selected Prose 1971 - 2001

Source: Finders Keepers: Selected Prose 1971 - 2001

“The poem is not only the point of origin for all the language and narrative arts, the poem returns us to the very social function of art as such.”

Art Poetry Language Social Return Function Narrative Narrative Art

Author:Ron Silliman

“Poetic language features an iconic rather than a predominantly conventional relationship of form and content in which all language (and cultural) elements, variant as well as invariant, may be involved in the expression of the content.", "Analysis of the Poetic Text.”

Wells May Art Form Poetry Language Expression Involved Elements Features Analysis Poetic Conventional Iconic

Author:Yuri Lotman

“Literature is a form of language that breaks with the whole definition of genres as forms adapted to an order of representations, and becomes merely a manifestation of a language which has no other law than that of affirming in opposition to all other forms of discourse its own precipitous existence.”

Art Whole Form Law Poetry Order Literature Language Existence Break Definitions Genre Manifestation Opposition Representation Discourse Adapted Affirming

Book:The Order of Things

Source: The Order of Things

“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

“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

“A child playing with dolls may shed heartfelt tears when his bundle of rags and scraps becomes deathly ill and dies ... So we may come to an understanding of language as playing with dolls: in language, scraps of sound are used to make dolls and replace all the things in the world.”

World May Children Used Poetry Dies Literature Language Understanding Sound Tears Ill Shed Dolls Heartfelt Scrap Rags Bundles Children Playing

Author:Velimir Khlebnikov

“Not only every great poet, but every genuine, but lesser poet, fulfils once for all some possibility of language, and so leaves one possibility less for his successors.”

Poetry Literature Language Possibility Poet Genuine Successors Great Poet

Author:T. S. Eliot

“In pursuing certain virtues - colorful local effects, personae and personality, juxtaposition, close calls with nonsense, uncertainty, critiques of ordinary language - the current crop of American poets necessarily give up on others.”

Source: Close Calls with Nonsense: Reading New Poetry

“Some poets marry a language; some have affairs with it; some treat it as a parent, some as a child, some as an equal, or as a friend.”

Children Poetry Literature Language Parent Poet Equal Treats Affair

Book:Close Calls with Nonsense: Reading New Poetry

Source: Close Calls with Nonsense: Reading New Poetry

“It is the role of the artistic coder to question the coding languages, both through self-reflection and by using them for unintended purposes. These coders introduce multiplicity where none existed and challenge definitions of intent for the entire environment of programming language, machine and system.”

Self Poetry Purpose Literature Language Challenges Roles Environment Reflection Machines Definitions Artistic Programming Introducing Self Reflection Programming Languages Multiplicity Coders

Author:Stephanie Strickland

“This capacity for oversignifying, for reading in, is precisely what poets tap into, both in their own practice and in the poem the give to the reader; and in doing so they turn language against its own project of conceptual division, and use it to heal itself - and in the process - paradoxically - to articulate new concepts that it can't yet accommodate.”

Giving Use Poetry Turns Reading Literature Language Process Practice Poet Reader Projects Concepts Capacity Heal Division Accommodate Heal Itself

Author:Don Paterson

“It may be safely affirmed that there neither is, nor can be, any essential difference between the language of prose and metrical composition.... They both speak by and to the same organs; the bodies in which both of them are clothed may be said to be of the same substance, their affections are kindred, and almost identical, not necessarily differing even in degree; Poetry sheds no tears "such as Angels weep," but natural and human tears; she can boast of no celestial ichor that distinguishes her vital juices from those of prose; the same human blood circulates through the veins of them both.”

“When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand--a center of gravity.”

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

“When I said. A rose is a rose is a rose. And then later made that into a ring I made poetry and what did I do I caressed completely caressed and addressed a noun.”

Made Said Poetry Language Poet Rose Rings Nouns

Book:Selected Writings of Gertrude Stein

Source: Selected Writings of Gertrude Stein

“I invented the colors of the vowels!--A black, E white, I red, O blue, U green--I made rules for the form and movement of each consonant, and, and with instinctive rhythms, I flattered myself that I had created a poetic language accessible, some day, to all the senses.”

Made Form Poetry Language Black White Movement Color Poet Red Blue Green Senses Rhythm Poetic Flattered Vowels Consonants

Author:Arthur Rimbaud

“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.”

Life Writing Firsts Humans Moments Age Poetry Humanity Speak Language Subjects Poet Source Protect Elements Tragedy Ancient Illness Old Age Human Life Tragic

Author:Louise Bogan

“German poetry is going in a very different direction from French poetry.... Its language has become more sober, more factual. It distrusts "beauty." It tries to be truthful.”

Trying Different Truth Poetry Language Beauty Poet Poetry Is Truthful Sober Distrust Factual Different Directions Being Truthful French Poetry

Book:Collected Prose

Source: Collected Prose

“They who in folly or mere greed Enslaved religion, markets, laws, Borrow our language now and bid Us to speak up in freedom's cause.”

Law Poetry Speak Language Causes Poet Mere Greed Folly

Book:The Complete Poems of C. Day Lewis

Source: The Complete Poems of C. Day Lewis

“A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.”

Love Persons Poetry Passion Language Poet Poetic Language Words Power Of Language Language And Power

Author:W. H. Auden

“Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits.”

Poetry Literature Language Poetry Is Poetic Synthesis Biscuits Hyacinths

Author:Carl Sandburg

“When it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry. The poet, too, is not nearly so concerned with describing facts as with creating images and establishing mental connections.”

Inspirational Facts Used Poetry Language Poet Creating Concerned Poetic Atoms Describing

Author:Niels Bohr

“Poetry is the language of intensity. Because we are going to die, an expression of intensity is justified.”

Death Poetry Dies Language Dying Expression Poetry Is Intensity Justified

Book:Cooling Time: An American Poetry Vigil

Source: Cooling Time: An American Poetry Vigil

“Language is fossil Poetry.”

Poetry Language Fossils

Author:Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Poetry is ordinary language raised to the Nth power. Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words.”

Ideas Together Poetry Language Emotion Poet Ordinary Tough Skins Raised Poetry Is Delicate Reading Poetry Poetry By Famous Poets Poetry By Poets Poetry Reading Tough Skin

Author:Paul Engle

“Poetry is a language in which man explores his own amazement.”

Men Poetry Language Poetry Is Amazement Predicaments Great Poetry Prose And Poetry

Book:The Early Days

Source: The Early Days

“Poetry is the language in which man explores his own amazement... says heaven and earth in one word... speaks of himself and his predicament as though for the first time.”

Men Firsts Earth Poetry Speak Language Heaven First Time Poetry Is One Word Heaven And Earth Amazement Predicaments

Author:Christopher Fry

“Prose-it might be speculated-is discourse; poetry ellipsis. Prose is spoken aloud; poetry overheard. The one is presumably articulate and social, a shared language, the voice of "communication"; the other is private, allusive, teasing, sly, idiosyncratic as the spider's delicate web, a kind of witchcraft unfathomable to ordinary minds.”

Writing Mind Kind Might Poetry Language Social Voice Communication Ordinary Prose Delicate Discourse Spiders Witchcraft Tease Unfathomable Sly

Book:(Woman) writer: occasions and opportunities

Source: (Woman) writer: occasions and opportunities

“Poetry is all nouns and verbs.”

Poetry Language Poetry Is Verbs Nouns

Author:Marianne Moore

“Poetry must find ways of breaking distance.... all languages are dialects that are made to break new grounds.”

Way Made Poetry Language Break Distance Dialect

Book:Yo-yo boing!

Source: Yo-yo boing!

“No man was ever yet a great poet, without being at the same time a profound philosopher. For poetry is the blossom and the fragrance of all human knowledge, human thoughts, human passions, emotions, language.”

Men Humans Poetry Passion Language Emotion Poet Profound Philosopher Poetry Is Fragrance Great Poet Human Thought Human Knowledge Poetry By Famous Poets

Author:Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“He who knows no foreign languages knows nothing of his own.”

Knows Inspiration Poetry Language Knowing Learning Foreign Language Language Learning Learning Language

Book:The Goethe Treasury: Selected Prose and Poetry

Source: The Goethe Treasury: Selected Prose and Poetry

“Poetry is ordinary language raised to the Nth power.”

Poetry Language Poet Ordinary Raised Poetry Is Delicate Reading Poetry Power Of Language Language And Power Poetry By Poets Poetry Reading Tough Skin

Author:Paul Engle

“Abstract art was the quivalent of poetic expression; I didn’t need to use words,but colors and lines. I didn’t need to belong to a language-oriented culture but to an open form of expression.”

Needs Art Use Form Poetry Culture Language Lines Color Painting Expression Abstract Poetic Abstract Art Wording

Author:Etel Adnan

“Language, thought, analysis, art, dance, poetry, mythmaking: these are the things that point the way toward the realm of the eschaton.”

Way Life Inspirational Art Poetry Language Inspirational Life Analysis Realms Art Dance

Book:True Hallucinations: And, the Archaic Revival

Source: True Hallucinations: And, the Archaic Revival

“Poetry is the art of using language to transcend language.”

Art Poetry Language Poetry Is

Author:Laurence Overmire

“We believe we can also show that words do not have exactly the same psychic "weight" depending on whether they belong to the language of reverie or to the language of daylight life-to rested language or language under surveillance-to the language of natural poetry or to the language hammered out by authoritarian prosodies.”

Believe Shows Poetry Language Natural Weight Psychics Surveillance Daylight Reverie Hammered Prosody

Author:Gaston Bachelard

“The cliché is dead poetry. English, being the language of an imaginative race, abounds in clichés, so that English literature is always in danger of being poisoned by its own secretions.”

Poetry Literature Language Race Danger Imaginative English Literature

Author:Gerald Brenan

“Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.”

Poetry Language Powerful Most Powerful Poetry Is Reading Poetry Distillation Poetry Reading

Author:Rita Dove

“There is no question that the language of "felt thought" must be quarried from our personal depths. Like the best gold, it does not lie on the surface.”

Doe Lying Poetry Language Felt Gold Depth Surface

Author:Jacques Maritain

“That's the main business of the poem!-to see if you can't make up a language that sets all your selves talking at once-all of them being fair to each other.”

Ifs Self Poetry Language Talking Fairs

Author:Richard Wilbur

“A poem is a form of refrigeration that stops language going bad.”

Form Poetry Language

Author:Peter Porter

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