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

The poet is the priest of the invisible.

Stevens, Wallace

Who among us has not, in moments of ambition, dreamt of the miracle of a form of poetic prose, musical but without rhythm and rhyme, both supple and staccato enough to adapt itself to the lyrical movements of our souls, the undulating movements of our reveries, and the convulsive movements of our consciences? This obsessive ideal springs above all from frequent contact with enormous cities, from the junction of their innumerable connections.

Baudelaire, Charles

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

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

Barrymore, John

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

Fitzhugh, C.

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

Chandler, Raymond

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

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

Sandburg, Carl

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

Aristotle

10.

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

Frost, Robert

11.

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

Fowles, John

12.

The poetic act consists of suddenly seeing that an idea splits up into a number of equal motifs and of grouping them; they rhyme.

Mallarme, Stephane

13.

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

14.

The eye is the notebook of the poet.

Lowell, James Russell

15.

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

16.

Every old poem is sacred.

Horace

17.

I have a new method of poetry. All you got to do is look over your notebooks... or lay down on a couch, and think of anything that comes into your head, especially the miseries. Then arrange in lines of two, three or four words each, don't bother about sentences, in sections of two, three or four lines each.

Ginsberg, Allen

18.

To a poet, silence is an acceptable response, even a flattering one.

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle

19.

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

Horace

20.

Poetry is life distilled.

Brooks, Gwendolyn

21.

Written poetry is worth reading once, and then should be destroyed. Let the dead poets make way for others. Then we might even come to see that it is our veneration for what has already been created, however beautiful and valid it may be, that petrifies us.

Artaud, Antonin

22.

Poetry must be as new as foam and as old as the rock.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

23.

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

24.

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

Ashbery, John

25.

It seems just possible that a poem might happen to a very young man: but a poem is not poetry --That is a life.

Eliot, T. S.

26.

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

Ackerman, Diane

27.

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

Marquis, Don

28.

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

Baudelaire, Charles

29.

Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.

Sandburg, Carl

30.

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.

31.

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

32.

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

Flaubert, Gustave

33.

It is as impossible to translate poetry as it is to translate music.

Voltaire

34.

It is with roses and locomotives (not to mention acrobats Spring electricity Coney Island the 4th of July the eyes of mice and Niagara Falls) that my poems are competing.

Cummings, E.E. (Edward. E.)

35.

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

Lamartine, Alphonse De

36.

A poet's pleasure is to withhold a little of his meaning, to intensify by mystification. He unzips the veil from beauty, but does not remove it.

White, Elwyn Brooks

37.

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

38.

Painting was called silent poetry and poetry speaking painting.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

39.

Poetry is the utterance of deep and heart-felt truth -- the true poet is very near the oracle.

Chapin, Edwin Hubbel

40.

The poets did well to conjoin music and medicine, because the office of medicine is but to tune the curious harp of man's body.

Bacon, Francis

41.

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

Cocteau, Jean

42.

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

Plath, Sylvia

43.

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

Bodenheim, Maxwell

44.

Poetry, even when apparently most fantastic, is always a revolt against artifice, a revolt, in a sense, against actuality.

Joyce, James

45.

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

46.

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

Joubert, Joseph

47.

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

Renard, Jules

48.

No verse can give pleasure for long, nor last, that is written by drinkers of water.

Horace

49.

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