Motivational Quotes

Poetry and poets

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

- Sitwell, Dame Edith

Best Quotes about Poetry and poets

Poetry is what Milton saw when he went blind.

Marquis, Don

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

Hare, David

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

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.

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

Lamartine, Alphonse De

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

Rilke, Rainer Maria

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

Ashbery, John

Poetry is what is lost in translation.

Frost, Robert

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

Joyce, James

10.

A poet can survive anything but a misprint.

Wilde, Oscar

11.

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

12.

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.

13.

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

14.

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

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle

15.

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

16.

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

Frost, Robert

17.

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.

18.

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

Engle, Paul

19.

If a poet has any obligation toward society, it is to write well. Being in the minority, he has no other choice. Failing this duty, he sinks into oblivion. Society, on the other hand, has no obligation toward the poet. A majority by definition, society thinks of itself as having other options than reading verses, no matter how well written. Its failure to do so results in its sinking to that level of locution at which society falls easy prey to a demagogue or a tyrant. This is society's own equivalent of oblivion.

Brodsky, Joseph

20.

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

21.

Poetry is a mere drug, Sir.

Farquhar, George

22.

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

23.

Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.

Sandburg, Carl

24.

A person born with an instinct for poverty.

Hubbard, Elbert

25.

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

Voltaire

26.

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

Diderot, Denis

27.

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.

28.

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

Barrymore, John

29.

Poets are born, not paid.

Mizner, Addison

30.

Poetry is life distilled.

Brooks, Gwendolyn

31.

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

Bodenheim, Maxwell

32.

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

Voltaire

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

36.

The eye is the notebook of the poet.

Lowell, James Russell

37.

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

Chandler, Raymond

38.

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

Flaubert, Gustave

39.

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

Sandburg, Carl

40.

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''

41.

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.)

42.

Poetry, the genre of purest beauty, was born of a truncated woman: her head severed from her body with a sword, a symbolic penis.

Dworkin, Andrea

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

Horace

46.

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

Morley, Christopher

47.

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.

48.

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

Renard, Jules

49.

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

50.

Painting was called silent poetry and poetry speaking painting.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo