Motivational Quotes

Poetry and poets

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

Best Quotes about Poetry and poets

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

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

Woolf, Virginia

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

Sandburg, Carl

Poets are born, not paid.

Mizner, Addison

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

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.

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

Sandburg, Carl

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

The essence of poetry is will and passion.

Hazlitt, William

10.

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

Sandburg, Carl

11.

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

Aristotle

12.

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

Ackerman, Diane

13.

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.

14.

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

15.

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

Aristotle

16.

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

Joyce, James

17.

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

Graves, Robert

18.

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.)

19.

We read poetry because the poets, like ourselves, have been haunted by the inescapable tyranny of time and death; have suffered the pain of loss, and the more wearing, continuous pain of frustration and failure; and have had moods of unlooked-for release and peace. They have known and watched in themselves and others.

Drew, Elizabeth

20.

The courage of the poets is to keep ajar the door that leads into madness.

Morley, Christopher

21.

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.

22.

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

23.

A person born with an instinct for poverty.

Hubbard, Elbert

24.

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

Baudelaire, Charles

25.

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

Eliot, T. S.

26.

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

Rilke, Rainer Maria

27.

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.

28.

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

Diderot, Denis

29.

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

30.

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.

31.

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.

32.

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

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle

33.

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

34.

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

Renard, Jules

35.

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

Chandler, Raymond

36.

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

Voltaire

37.

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.

38.

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

39.

Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.

Sandburg, Carl

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.

Painting was called silent poetry and poetry speaking painting.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

42.

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

43.

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

Fowles, John

44.

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

Sitwell, Dame Edith

45.

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

Lamartine, Alphonse De

46.

The eye is the notebook of the poet.