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Poetry Quotes

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Poetry Quotes

“Poetry is a river; many voices travel in it; poem after poem moves along in the exciting crests and falls of the river waves. None is timeless; each arrives in an historical context; almost everything, in the end, passes. But the desire to make a poem, and the world's willingness to receive it--indeed the world's need of it--these never pass.”

World Needs Ends Moving Desire Poetry Fall Voice Rivers Exciting Historical Wave Poetry Is Willingness Timeless Historical Context

Book:A Poetry Handbook

Source: A Poetry Handbook

“What is poetry? Do not enquire. The secret dies by prying. How does the heart beat? I fainted when I saw it on the screen, opening and closing like a flower ... Poetry is like this, it is life moving, terrible, vivid. Look the other way when you write, or you might faint.”

Way Writing Looks Heart Doe Might Moving Poetry Dies Secret Saws Flower Terrible Beats Screens Opening Poetry Is Vivid Closing Heart Beat What Is Poetry

Author:Elizabeth Smart

“Poetry and code - and mathematics - make us read differently from other forms of writing. Written poetry makes the silent reader read three kinds of pattern at once; code moves the reader from a static to an active, interactive and looped domain; while algebraic topology allows us to read qualitative forms and their transformations.”

Writing Kind Moving Form Poetry Three Literature Written Reader Transformation Mathematics Silent Patterns Active Code Domain Static Interactive Qualitative Topology

Author:Stephanie Strickland

“Social questions are too sectional, too topical, too temporal to move a man to the mighty effort which is needed to produce greatpoetry. Prison reform may nerve Charles Reade to produce an effective and businesslike prose melodrama; but it could never produce Hamlet, Faust, or Peer Gynt.”

Men May Moving Poetry Social Effort Produce Poet Needed Prison Reform Prose Nerves Peers Melodrama Faust Prison Reform

Author:George Bernard Shaw

“Prophetic utterance, like poetic utterance, transforms experience and moves the receiver to new attitudes. The kinds of experience--the recognitions or revelations--out of which both prophecy and poetry emerge, are such as to stir the prophet or poet to speech that may exceed their own known capacities; they are "inspired," they breathe in revelation and breathe out new words; and by so doing they transfer over to the listener or reader a parallel experience, a parallel intensity, which impels that person into new attitudes and new actions.”

“We tend to be so bombarded with information, and we move so quickly, that there's a tendency to treat everything on the surface level and process things quickly. This is antithetical to the kind of openness and perception you have to have to be receptive to poetry.poetry seems to exist in a parallel universe outside daily life in America.”

Kind Seems America Moving Poetry Universe Process Levels Information Poet Perception Treats Surface Tendencies Daily Life Openness Parallels Receptive Parallel Universe Bombarded

Author:Rita Dove

“I pulled a book by Robinson Jeffers off the shelf one day. It was powerfully moving. Tears ran down my face. That's when I became a poet.”

Book Faces Moving Poetry Tears Poet One Day Ran Shelves

Author:William Everson

“Verses which do not teach men new and moving truths do not deserve to be read.”

Men Moving Poetry Teach Deserve Verses

Book:The Portable Voltaire

Source: The Portable Voltaire

“Peitaho Heavy rains fall on Yuyen, the northland kingdom of swallows. White pages of rain envelop the sky, and fishing boats off the Island of the Emperor Chin disappear on the ocean. Which way have they gone? More than a thousand years ago the mighty emperor Tsao Tsao cracked his whip and drove his army against the Tartars. He left us a poem: "Let us move east to the Stone Mountains." Today we still shiver in the autumn gale, in desolate winds, yet another man is in the world.”