Home / Topics / Poetry Quotes

Poetry Quotes

Browse 12091 quotes about Poetry.

Poetry Quotes

“Poetry, even when apparently most fantastic, is always a revolt against artifice, a revolt, in a sense, against actuality. It speaks of what seems fantastic and unreal to those who have lost the simple intuitions which are the test of reality; and, as it is often found at war with its age, so it makes no account of history, which is fabled by the daughters of memory.”

War Reality Seems Age Poetry Found Lost Speak Memories Simple Daughter Tests Accounts Intuition Fantastic Revolt Unreal Actuality Artifice

Book:Delphi Complete Works of James Joyce (Illustrated)

Source: Delphi Complete Works of James Joyce (Illustrated)

“I do not suppose that anyone not a poet can realize the agony of creating a poem. Every nerve, even every muscle, seems strained to the breaking point. The poem will not be denied; to refuse to write it would be a greater torture. It tears its way out of the brain, splintering and breaking its passage, and leaves that organ in the state of a jelly-fish when the task is done.”

Way Writing States Done Seems Would Be Poetry Realizing Brain Greater Tears Poet Creating Tasks Fishes Refuse Torture Muscles Nerves Passages Denied Organs Agony Jelly Point Break

Author:Amy Lowell

“The truth, it seems, is not just what you find when you open a door: it is itself a door, which the poet is always on the verge of going through.”

Seems Truth Poetry Doors Poet Verge

Book:Second words: selected critical prose

Source: Second words: selected critical prose

“The idea that a student can write a sonnet or a novel without having a sound understanding about its history, and where it fits into literature as a whole, seems to me to be manifestly daft.”

Writing Ideas Whole Seems Poetry Literature Understanding Sound Novel Students Fit Sonnet Daft

Author:Nicholas Royle

“A statue of Apollo in a museum does not seem naked, but attach a tie to its neck and it will strike us as indecent ... The text is one of the components of an artistic work, albeit an extremely important component ... But the artistic effect as a whole arises from comparisons of the text with a complex set of ontological and ideological esthetic ideas.”

Doe Important Ideas Whole Seems Poetry Literature Effects Complexes Strikes Arise Naked Artistic Ties Necks Comparison Museums Components Statues Apollo Ideological

Author:Yuri Lotman

“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

“But sometimes everything I write with the threadbare art of my eye seems a snapshot”

Writing Art Sometimes Seems Eye Poetry Poet Snapshots

Book:Robert Lowell: a tribute

Source: Robert Lowell: a tribute

“It seems to me a purely lyric poet gives himself, right down to his sex, to his mood, utterly and abandonedly, whirls himself roundtill he spontaneously combusts into verse. He has nothing that goes on, no passion, only a few intense moods, separate like odd stars, and when each has burned away, he must die.”

Giving Seems Poetry Dies Passion Stars Sex Poet Goes On Mood Intense Odd Burned Verses

Author:D. H. Lawrence

“If one believes philosophers, then what we call religion is only a deliberately popularized or an instinctively artless philosophy. Poets seem to consider religion rather as a variation of poetry which by misjudging its proper beautiful game takes itself too seriously and one-sidedly. Philosophy, however, admits and recognizes that it can begin and complete itself only with religion. Poetry seeks only to strive for the infinite and despises worldly utility and culture, which are the true antitheses of religion. Eternal peace among artists is thus not far away.”

“All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.”

“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.”

World Life Helping Dream Light Seems Truth Pain Beautiful Joy Lying Poetry Night Hope Struggle Land Army Various Ignorant Flight Being True Confused Alarms Clash Certitude

Author:Matthew Arnold

“You must believe: a poem is a holy thing - a good poem, that is. The poem, even a short time after being written, seems no miracle; unwritten, it seems something beyond the capacity of the gods.”

Believe Seems Poetry Written Holy Capacity Miracle Short Time Unwritten

Author:Theodore Roethke

“Shy gold begins to peep through the sombre green - the wattle's wedding dress - and Spring is near. Then suddenly it seems, one golden morning, the Bush awakes, a living thing. Flowers bloom, birds sing, and all the world puts on its gayest dress to greet the laughing Spring.”

“For wheresoe'er I turn my ravish'd eyes, Gay gilded scenes and shining prospects rise, Poetic fields encompass me around, And still I seem to tread on classic ground.”

Stills Seems Eye Poetry Turns Fields Scene Gay Shining Classic Poetic Prospects Gilded

Author:Joseph Addison