Motivational Quotes

Poetry and poets

I cannot accept the doctrine that in poetry there is a suspension of belief. A poet must never make a statement simply because it is sounds poetically exciting; he must also believe it to be true.

- Auden, W. H.

Best Quotes about Poetry and poets

She opened up a book of poems and handed it to me written by an Italian poet from the 13th century and every one of them words rang true and glowed like burning coal pouring off of every page like it was written in my soul from me to you.

Dylan, Bob

The writing of a poem is like a child throwing stones into a mineshaft. You compose first, then you listen for the reverberation.

Fenton, James

If a poet has any obligation toward society, it is to write well. Being in the minority, he has no other choice. Failing this duty, he sinks into oblivion. Society, on the other hand, has no obligation toward the poet. A majority by definition, society thinks of itself as having other options than reading verses, no matter how well written. Its failure to do so results in its sinking to that level of locution at which society falls easy prey to a demagogue or a tyrant. This is society's own equivalent of oblivion.

Brodsky, Joseph

We all write poems. It is simply that poets are the ones who write in words.

Fowles, John

Rhymes, meters, stanza forms, etc., are like servants. If the master is fair enough to win their affection and firm enough to command their respect, the result is an orderly happy household. If he is too tyrannical, they give notice; if he lacks authority, they become slovenly, impertinent, drunk and dishonest.

Auden, W. H.

We must believe that emotion recollected in tranquillity is an inexact formula. For it is neither emotion, nor recollection, nor without distortion of meaning, tranquillity. It is a concentration, and a new thing resulting from the concentration of a very great number of experiences which to the practical and active person would not seem to be experiences at all; it is a concentration which does not happen consciously or of deliberation. These experiences are not recollected and they finally unite in an atmosphere which is tranquil only in that it is a passive attending upon the event.

Eliot, T. S.

Spring has returned. The Earth is like a child that knows poems.

Rilke, Rainer Maria

Poetry is the special medium of spiritual crazy wisdom, the form of expression that comes closest to creating a bridge between words and what is wordless.

Nisker, Wes ''Scoop''

An age which is incapable of poetry is incapable of any kind of literature except the cleverness of a decadence.

Chandler, Raymond

10.

Every old poem is sacred.

Horace

11.

As to Don Juan, confess that it is the sublime of that there sort of writing; it may be bawdy, but is it not good English? It may be profligate, but is it not life, is it not the thing? Could any man have written it who has not lived in the world? and tooled in a post-chaise? in a hackney coach? in a Gondola? against a wall? in a court carriage? in a vis a vis? on a table? and under it?

Byron, Lord

12.

All one's inventions are true, you can be sure of that. Poetry is as exact a science as geometry.

Flaubert, Gustave

13.

Poetry is what is lost in translation.

Frost, Robert

14.

Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It's that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that's what the poet does.

Ginsberg, Allen

15.

I would as soon write free verse as play tennis with the net down.

Frost, Robert

16.

The poet is the priest of the invisible.

Stevens, Wallace

17.

Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.

Frost, Robert

18.

Poetry is what Milton saw when he went blind.

Marquis, Don

19.

Poetry implies the whole truth, philosophy expresses only a particle of it.

Thoreau, Henry David

20.

Of all great poems, love is the absolute and essential foundation.

Fitzhugh, C.

21.

Poets are born, not paid.

Mizner, Addison

22.

Each venture is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate with shabby equipment always deteriorating in the general mess of imprecision of feeling.

Eliot, T. S.

23.

Poets and heroes are of the same race, the latter do what the former conceive.

Lamartine, Alphonse De

24.

I have written some poetry that I don't understand myself.

Sandburg, Carl

25.

Poetry is at least an elegance and at most a revelation.

Fitzgerald, Robert

26.

Writing a book of poetry is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo.

Marquis, Don

27.

Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.

Sandburg, Carl

28.

Poetry must have something in it that is barbaric, vast and wild.

Diderot, Denis

29.

The poet speaks to all men of that other life of theirs that they have smothered and forgotten.

Sitwell, Dame Edith

30.

Poetry is the exquisite expression of exquisite expressions.

Roux, Joseph

31.

Homer has taught all other poets the are of telling lies skillfully.

Aristotle

32.

No one ever was a great poet, that applied himself much to anything else.

Temple, Sir William

33.

The poet gives us his essence, but prose takes the mold of the body and mind.

Woolf, Virginia

34.

The essence of poetry is will and passion.

Hazlitt, William

35.

Poetry is the journal of a sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the sky.

Sandburg, Carl

36.

Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words.

Engle, Paul

37.

No poems can please for long or live that are written by water-drinkers.

Horace

38.

Poetry is emotion put into measure. The emotion must come by nature, but the measure can be acquired by art.

Hardy, Thomas

39.

I've read some of your modern free verse and wonder who set it free.

Barrymore, John

40.

Such is the role of poetry. It unveils, in the strict sense of the word. It lays bare, under a light which shakes off torpor, the surprising things which surround us and which our senses record mechanically.

Cocteau, Jean

41.

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. It has the virtue of being able to say twice as much as prose in half the time, and the drawback, if you do not give it your full attention, of seeming to say half as much in twice the time.

Fry, Christopher

42.

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

Cocteau, Jean

43.

You will not find poetry anywhere unless you bring some of it with you.

Joubert, Joseph

44.

Poetry is the impish attempt to paint the color of the wind.

Bodenheim, Maxwell

45.

It is a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art than he can by practicing it.

Auden, W. H.

46.

I by no means rank poetry high in the scale of intelligence --this may look like affectation but it is my real opinion. It is the lava of the imagination whose eruption prevents an earthquake.

Byron, Lord

47.

Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself, but with its subject.

Keats, John

48.

Poetry makes nothing happen. It survives in the valley of its saying.

Auden, W. H.

49.

Prose on certain occasions can bear a great deal of poetry; on the other hand, poetry sinks and swoons under a moderate weight of prose.

Landor, Walter Savage

50.

Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.