POETRY QUOTES IX

quotations about poetry

Admittedly or not, conscious or unconscious, the poetic state, a transcendent experience of life, is what the public is fundamentally seeking through love, crime, drugs, war, or insurrection.

ANTONIN ARTAUD

"The Theatre of Cruelty" (Second Manifesto), The Theater and Its Double

Tags: Antonin Artaud


It is a test (a positive test, I do not assert that it is always valid negatively), that genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.

T. S. ELIOT

"Dante"

Tags: T. S. Eliot


Poetry can be a really great outlet for kids and teens. There are so many rules when you're a teen, but writing poetry is totally open-ended. It's a great way for kids and teens to talk about their feelings and what's going on with no rules. Whatever comes out, comes out.

ELISSA DICKSON

"Elissa Dickson is new San Miguel County Poet Laureate", The Daily Planet, May 4, 2016


Poets are the most injurious romancers by which society is deluded; for they excite the feelings or the imagination to such an extent--creating superhuman excellences--that the dull realities of life, its frauds, its meanness, its falsehood, or even its truth, alike sicken and disgust.

CHARLES WILLIAM DAY

The Maxims, Experiences, and Observations of Agogos

Tags: Charles William Day


Poetry is indispensable -- if I only knew what for.

JEAN COCTEAU

attributed, The Necessity of Art

Tags: Jean Cocteau


There's no preparation for poetry. Four years of grave digging with a nice volume of poetry or a book of philosophy in one's pocket would serve as well as any university.

CHARLES SIMIC

The Paris Review, spring 2005

Tags: Charles Simic


The white light of truth, in traversing the many sided transparent soul of the poet, is refracted into iris-hued poetry.

HERBERT SPENCER

The Philosophy of Style

Tags: Herbert Spencer


Out on the foolish phrase, but there's a hard rhyming without it.

ROBERT BROWNING

letter to Elizabeth Barrett, February 26, 1845

Tags: Robert Browning


We hate poetry that has a palpable design upon us -- and if we do not agree, seems to put its hand in its breeches pocket. Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not startle or amaze with itself, but with its subject.

JOHN KEATS

letter to John Hamilton Reynolds, February 3, 1818

Tags: John Keats


Sometimes when a prose poem is floundering, I rewrite it as verse, and it's better in that form. The reverse process of verse into prose poem, also works to clarify what's working in the writing and what's not. It's not a blunt line that demarcates the difference between verse and the prose poem.

WALTER BARGEN

"An interview with Walter Bargen, first poet laureate of Missouri"

Tags: Walter Bargen


Whenever I read a poem that moves me, I know I'm not alone in the world. I feel a connection to the person who wrote it, knowing that he or she has gone through something similar to what I've experienced, or felt something like what I have felt. And their poem gives me hope and courage, because I know that they survived, that their life force was strong enough to turn experience into words and shape it into meaning and then bring it toward me to share.

GREGORY ORR

All Things Considered, February 20, 2006

Tags: Gregory Orr


The most generous critic, if he is to be discriminating and just, cannot, let me say again, allow that any verse which is profoundly obscure or utterly unmusical, no matter how intellectual in substance, deserves the appellation of poetry.

ALFRED AUSTIN

The Bridling of Pegasus

Tags: Alfred Austin


No verse is free for the man who wants to do a good job.

T. S. ELIOT

The Music of Poetry

Tags: T. S. Eliot


Poetry is a serious business; literature is the apparatus through which the world tries to keep intact its important ideas and feelings.

MARY OLIVER

A Poetry Handbook

Tags: Mary Oliver


You can tell it's a poem because it's swimming in a little gel pack of white space. That shows it's a poem.

NICHOLSON BAKER

The Anthologist

Tags: Nicholson Baker


Poetry is a controlled refinement of sobbing.

NICHOLSON BAKER

The Anthologist

Tags: Nicholson Baker


Poetry makes life what lights and music do the stage.

CHARLES DICKENS

The Pickwick Papers

Tags: Charles Dickens


The object of linguistics is language; that of poetics is concrete utterance. Language is an institution, a formal system which constitutes, for the hypothetical speaker, a "competence"; it is a virtual object. Speech (the poetic utterance, for our purposes) is an individual act which formulates a concrete discourse; it is a "performance".

ANNA BALAKIAN

The Symbolist Movement in the Literature of European Languages

Tags: Anna Balakian


Poets don't draw. They unravel their handwriting and then tie it up again, but differently.

JEAN COCTEAU

attributed, Jean Cocteau and the French Scene

Tags: Jean Cocteau


Being a poet is one of the unhealthier jobs -- no regular hours, so many temptations!

ELIZABETH BISHOP

One Art: Letters

Tags: Elizabeth Bishop