Motivational Quotes

Poetry and poets

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

- Marquis, Don

Best Quotes about Poetry and poets

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

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

Sandburg, Carl

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

Immature poets imitate, mature poets steal.

Massinger, Philip

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

Sandburg, Carl

Every old poem is sacred.

Horace

Painting was called silent poetry and poetry speaking painting.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

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

10.

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.

11.

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

Frost, Robert

12.

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

Marquis, Don

13.

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

14.

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

Barrymore, John

15.

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

Horace

16.

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

17.

Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.

Sandburg, Carl

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.

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

20.

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

Woolf, Virginia

21.

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

22.

A poet can survive anything but a misprint.

Wilde, Oscar

23.

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

Lamartine, Alphonse De

24.

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

Frost, Robert

25.

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

Dickinson, Emily

26.

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

Fitzgerald, Robert

27.

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.

28.

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.

29.

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

Ackerman, Diane

30.

Poetry is a mere drug, Sir.

Farquhar, George

31.

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

Chapin, Edwin Hubbel

32.

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

Voltaire

33.

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

Graves, Robert

34.

The essence of poetry is will and passion.

Hazlitt, William

35.

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

36.

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

Flaubert, Gustave

37.

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

38.

The poet is the priest of the invisible.

Stevens, Wallace

39.

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

Stedman, Captain J. G.

40.

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

41.

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

Baudelaire, Charles

42.

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''

43.

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

Morley, Christopher

44.

The eye is the notebook of the poet.

Lowell, James Russell

45.

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

Fitzhugh, C.

46.

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

47.

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

Rilke, Rainer Maria

48.

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.

49.

Poets wish to profit or to please.

Horace

50.

Poetry is life distilled.

Brooks, Gwendolyn