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Poetry Quotes

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Poetry Quotes

“One way of ending the poem is to turn it back on itself, like a serpent with its tail in its mouth.”

Way Poetry Turns Mouths One Way Tails Serpent

Author:Maxine Kumin

“Poetry saves what is human in this world going gaudy & insane. In exploring small truths, something larger might turn up, adding dimension, insight, vision, recognition to our lives. We just might be more complete, more aware after a poem.”

World Humans Might Poetry Turns Vision Our Lives This World Insight Insane Recognition Dimensions Exploring Gaudy

Book:Claiming Breath

Source: Claiming Breath

“If you do not answer the noise and urgency of your gifts, they will turn on you. Or drag you down with their immense sadness at being abandoned.”

Ifs Poetry Turns Answers Sadness Talent Noise Abandoned Drag Immense Gifted Turn-on Urgency Aptitude Sense Of Urgency Giftedness

Author:Joy Harjo

“Wheresoe'er I turn my view, All is strange, yet nothing new: Endless labor all along, Endless labor to be wrong: Phrase that Time has flung away; Uncouth words in disarray, Trick'd in antique ruff and bonnet, Ode, and elegy, and sonnet.”

Poetry Turns Views Strange Labor Tricks Endless Phrases Sonnet Antiques Nothing New Bonnets Elegy Odes Uncouth Disarray

Book:The Poetical Works of Doctors Smollett, Johnson, and Goldsmith

Source: The Poetical Works of Doctors Smollett, Johnson, and Goldsmith

“The future of poetry is immense, because in poetry, where it is worthy of its high destinies, our race, as time goes on, will find an ever surer and surer stay ... More and more mankind will discover that we have to turn to poetry to interpret life for us, to console us, to sustain us.”

Art Poetry Turns Race Destiny Mankind Goes On Worthy Poetry Is Immense Console Time Goes On

Book:Poetry and Criticism of Matthew Arnold

Source: Poetry and Criticism of Matthew Arnold

“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

“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)

“Remember me when I am gone away, Gone far away into the silent land; When you can no more hold me by the hand, Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay. Remember me when no more day by day You tell me of our future that you planned: Only remember me; you understand It will be late to counsel then or pray. Yet if you should forget me for a while And afterward remember, do not grieve: For if the darkness and corruption leave A vestige of the thoughts that once I had, Better by far you should forget and smile Than that you should remember and be sad.”

Ifs Should Hands Remember Poetry Turns Forget Half Darkness Gone Land Praying Late Silent Corruption Grieving Our Future Far Away Remember Me Hold Me Forget Me Gone Away Grieving Poems

Author:Christina Rossetti

“For the crown of our life as it closes Is darkness, the fruit thereof dust; No thorns go as deep as a rose's, And love is more cruel than lust. Time turns the old days to derision, Our loves into corpses or wives; And marriage and death and division Make barren our lives.”

Poetry Time Turns Love Is Darkness Our Lives Wife And Love Rose Fruit Lust Dust Division Crowns Our Love Corpses Thorns Old Days Barren Life Time Derision

Author:Algernon Charles Swinburne

“But Fear and the Muse in turn guard the place Where the banished poet has gone And the night that comes with quickened pace Is ignorant of dawn.”

Poetry Night Turns Gone Poet Ignorant Dawn Pace Muse

Author:Anna Akhmatova

“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

“I had rather be a Kitten, and cry mew, Than one of these same Meeter Ballad-mongers: I had rather heare a Brazen Candlestick turn'd, Or a dry Wheele grate on the Axle-tree, And that would set my teeth nothing an edge, Nothing so much, as mincing Poetrie.”

Poetry Turns Tree Cry Edges Teeth Dry Kitten Ballads Brazen Grate

Book:Renaissance Acting Editions: The First Part of Henry the Fourth, with the Life and Death of HENRY Sirnamed HOT-SPURRE [King Henry IV, Part 1]

Source: Renaissance Acting Editions: The First Part of Henry the Fourth, with the Life and Death of HENRY Sirnamed HOT-SPURRE [King Henry IV, Part 1]

“The hand above turns those leaves of loves, all in all a timeless view. Each dream of life flung from paradise everlasting, ever new.”

Dream Hands Poetry Turns Views Paradise Timeless Everlasting

Book:Patti Smith Collected Lyrics, 1970–2015

Source: Patti Smith Collected Lyrics, 1970–2015