Motivational Quotes

Poetry and poets

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

Best Quotes about Poetry and poets

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

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

Fitzgerald, Robert

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.

When a poet's mind is perfectly equipped for its work, it is constantly amalgamating disparate experiences.

Eliot, T. S.

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

Stedman, Captain J. G.

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

Cocteau, Jean

Poetry is what is lost in translation.

Frost, Robert

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

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

Engle, Paul

10.

Just as a new scientific discovery manifests something that was already latent in the order of nature, and at the same time is logically related to the total structure of the existing science, so the new poem manifests something that was already latent in the order of words.

Frye, Northrop

11.

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.

12.

Poetry is the exquisite expression of exquisite expressions.

Roux, Joseph

13.

Every old poem is sacred.

Horace

14.

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.

15.

A poet can survive anything but a misprint.

Wilde, Oscar

16.

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

Woolf, Virginia

17.

Poetry is a mere drug, Sir.

Farquhar, George

18.

It does not need that a poem should be long. Every word was once a poem. Every new relationship is a new word.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

19.

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

Horace

20.

Immature poets imitate, mature poets steal.

Massinger, Philip

21.

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

Plath, Sylvia

22.

A person born with an instinct for poverty.

Hubbard, Elbert

23.

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

24.

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

Renard, Jules

25.

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

Dickinson, Emily

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

Aristotle

29.

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

Graves, Robert

30.

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

Voltaire

31.

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

Diderot, Denis

32.

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

Ackerman, Diane

33.

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

Chapin, Edwin Hubbel

34.

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

Frost, Robert

35.

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

36.

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.

37.

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

Flaubert, Gustave

38.

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.)

39.

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

40.

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

Hardy, Thomas

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

Barrymore, John

45.

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

Aristotle

46.

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

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle

47.

This poem will never reach its destination. [On Rousseau's Ode To Posterity]