Motivational Quotes

Poetry and poets

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

Best Quotes about Poetry and poets

Between religion's this is and poetry's but suppose this is, there must always be some kind of tension, until the possible and the actual meet at infinity.

Frye, Northrop

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.

A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. It finds the thought and the thought finds the words.

Frost, Robert

As a poet there is only one political duty, and that is to defend one's language against corruption. When it is corrupted, people lose faith in what they hear and this leads to violence.

Auden, W. H.

A mighty good sausage stuffer was spoiled when the man became a poet.

Field, Eugene

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

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

Frost, Robert

Poetry is a mere drug, Sir.

Farquhar, George

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

Marquis, Don

10.

The eye is the notebook of the poet.

Lowell, James Russell

11.

Poetry doesn't belong to those who write it, but to thosewho need it.

12.

The poet is the priest of the invisible.

Stevens, Wallace

13.

Poetry is the achievement of the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits.

Sandburg, Carl

14.

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

15.

The job of the poet is to render the world -- to see it and report it without loss, without perversion. No poet ever talks about feelings. Only sentimental people do.

Doren, Mark Van

16.

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

Fowles, John

17.

If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.

Dickinson, Emily

18.

Poetry is either something that lives like fire inside you --like music to the musician or Marxism to the Communist --or else it is nothing, an empty formalized bore around which pedants can endlessly drone their notes and explanations.

19.

A poem records emotions and moods that lie beyond normal language, that can only be patched together and hinted at metaphorically.

Ackerman, Diane

20.

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

Lamartine, Alphonse De

21.

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''

22.

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.

23.

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

Barrymore, John

24.

If there's no money in poetry, neither is there poetry in money.

Graves, Robert

25.

Poetry is life distilled.

Brooks, Gwendolyn

26.

Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.

Sandburg, Carl

27.

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

Flaubert, Gustave

28.

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

Hardy, Thomas

29.

I would define the poetic effect as the capacity that a text displays for continuing to generate different readings, without ever being completely consumed.

Eco, Umberto

30.

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

31.

There is the view that poetry should improve your life. I think people confuse it with the Salvation Army.

Ashbery, John

32.

A beautiful line of verse has twelve feet, and two wings.

Renard, Jules

33.

Any healthy man can go without food for two days -- but not without poetry.

Baudelaire, Charles

34.

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

35.

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

Diderot, Denis

36.

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

Engle, Paul

37.

Teach you children poetry; it opens the mind, lends grace to wisdom and makes the heroic virtues hereditary.

Scott, Sir Walter

38.

Poetry is an art, the easiest to dabble in, but the hardest to reach true excellence.

Stedman, Captain J. G.

39.

When power leads man towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.

Kennedy, John F.

40.

There is only beauty -- and it has only one perfect expression -- poetry. All the rest is a lie --except for those who live by the body, love, and, that love of the mind, friendship. For me, Poetry takes the place of love, because it is enamored of itself, and because its sensual delight falls back deliciously in my soul.

Mallarme, Stephane

41.

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

Cocteau, Jean

42.

The poetry from the eighteenth century was prose; the prose from the seventeenth century was poetry.

Hare, David

43.

The blood jet is poetry and there is no stopping it.

Plath, Sylvia

44.

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

Auden, W. H.

45.

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

Fitzhugh, C.

46.

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

Sandburg, Carl

47.

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

Chandler, Raymond

48.

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

Woolf, Virginia

49.

A poet can survive anything but a misprint.

Wilde, Oscar

50.

In the works of the better poets you get the sensation that they're not talking to people any more, or to some seraphical creature. What they're doing is simply talking back to the language itself --as beauty, sensuality, wisdom, irony --those aspects of language of which the poet is a clear mirror. Poetry is not an art or a branch of art, it's something more. If what distinguishes us from other species is speech, then poetry, which is the supreme linguistic operation, is our anthropological, indeed genetic, goal. Anyone who regards poetry as an entertainment, as a read, commits an anthropological crime, in the first place, against himself.

Brodsky, Joseph