Motivational Quotes

Poetry and poets

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

- Sandburg, Carl

Best Quotes about Poetry and poets

A poet can survive anything but a misprint.

Wilde, Oscar

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

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

Bodenheim, Maxwell

Poetry is the key to the hieroglyphics of nature.

Hare, David

The eye is the notebook of the poet.

Lowell, James Russell

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

Fitzhugh, C.

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

Flaubert, Gustave

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

Barrymore, John

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.

10.

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

11.

Every old poem is sacred.

Horace

12.

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

Graves, Robert

13.

I by no means rank poetry high in the scale of intelligence --this may look like affectation but it is my real opinion. It is the lava of the imagination whose eruption prevents an earthquake.

Byron, Lord

14.

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.)

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

Horace

18.

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

Sandburg, Carl

19.

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

Fowles, John

20.

Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.

Sandburg, Carl

21.

Poetry is what is lost in translation.

Frost, Robert

22.

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

Auden, W. H.

23.

Immature poets imitate, mature poets steal.

Massinger, Philip

24.

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

Sandburg, Carl

25.

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

Ashbery, John

26.

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

Aristotle

27.

A person born with an instinct for poverty.

Hubbard, Elbert

28.

Poetry implies the whole truth, philosophy expresses only a particle of it.

Thoreau, Henry David

29.

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

30.

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

Ackerman, Diane

31.

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.

32.

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

Hardy, Thomas

33.

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

Chapin, Edwin Hubbel

34.

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

Cocteau, Jean

35.

Poetry is a mere drug, Sir.

Farquhar, George

36.

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

37.

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.

38.

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

39.

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

Hare, David

40.

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

Dickinson, Emily

41.

No one ever was a great poet, that applied himself much to anything else.

Temple, Sir William

42.

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

Frost, Robert

43.

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

Diderot, Denis

44.

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

45.

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.

46.

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.

47.

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

Fitzgerald, Robert

48.

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

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle

49.

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

Engle, Paul

50.

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