POETRY QUOTES IV

quotations about poetry

Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

A Defence of Poetry

Tags: Percy Bysshe Shelley


Poetry is art, but poetry contests are sport, bound by rules as exacting as any that govern collegiate competition.

ZUSHA ELINSON

"Poetry Is Art, but Poetry Slams Are Sport, Bound by Pages of Rules", Wall Street Journal, April 8, 2016


I approach poetry and spirituality like literary nitroglycerin -- a little can do a lot and you better damn well be careful with it.

CRAIG JOHNSON

"A Conversation with Craig Johnson", The Cold Dish

Tags: Craig Johnson


A poet's work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep.

SALMAN RUSHDIE

London Independent, February 18, 1989

Tags: Salman Rushdie


When an exquisite poem brings one's eyes to the point of tears, those tears are not evidence of an excess of joy, they are witness far more to an exacerbated melancholy, a disposition of the nerves, a nature exiled among imperfect things, which would like to possess, without delay, a paradise revealed on this very same earth.

CHARLES BAUDELAIRE

"Notes nouvelles sur Edgar Poe III", L'art romantique

Tags: Charles Baudelaire


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.

JEAN COCTEAU

"Le Secret Professionnel", A Call to Order

Tags: Jean Cocteau


Poetry is simply the most beautiful, impressive and wisely effective mode of saying things, and hence its importance.

MATTHEW ARNOLD

"Heinrich Heine", Essays in Criticism, First Series

Tags: Matthew Arnold


Poetry can repair no loss, but it defies the space which separates. And it does this by its continual labor of reassembling what has been scattered.

JOHN BERGER

And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos

Tags: John Berger


None knows the reason why this curse
Was sent on him, this love of making verse.

HORACE

Ars Poetica

Tags: Horace


A long poem is a test of invention which I take to be the Polar star of poetry, as fancy is the sails, and imagination the rudder.

JOHN KEATS

letter to Benjamin Bailey, October 8, 1817

Tags: John Keats


We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.

WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

"Anima Hominis", Per Amica Silentia Lunae

Tags: William Butler Yeats


The crown of literature is poetry.

MATTHEW ARNOLD

Essays in Criticism, Second Series

Tags: Matthew Arnold


My poetry was born between the hill and the river, it took its voice from the rain, and like the timber, it steeped itself in the forests.

PABLO NERUDA

Memoirs

Tags: Pablo Neruda


I think it was rather an advantage not having any living poets in England or America in whom one took any particular interest. I don't know what it would be like but I think it would be a rather troublesome distraction to have such a lot of dominating presences, as you call them, about. Fortunately we weren't bothered by each other.

T. S. ELIOT

The Paris Review, spring-summer 1959

Tags: T. S. Eliot


For verses and poems I can turn to true food.

ST. AUGUSTINE

Confessions

Tags: St. Augustine


A lot of being a poet consists of willed ignorance. If you woke up from your trance and realized the nature of the life-threatening and dignity-destroying precipice you were walking along, you would switch into actuarial sciences immediately.

MARGARET ATWOOD

On Writing Poetry

Tags: Margaret Atwood


We feel poetry as we feel the closeness of a woman, or as we feel a mountain or a bay. If we feel it immediately, why dilute it with other words, which no doubt will be weaker than our feelings?

JORGE LUIS BORGES

"Poetry"

Tags: Jorge Luis Borges


Some people pretend they never were in love and never wrote poetry; two weaknesses which they dare not own -- one of the heart, the other of the mind.

JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE

"Of the Affections", Les Caractères

Tags: Jean de La Bruyere


Poetry never loses its appeal. Sometimes its audience wanes and sometimes it swells like a wave. But the essential mystery of being human is always going to engage and compel us. We're involved in a mystery. Poetry uses words to put us in touch with that mystery. We're always going to need it.

EDWARD HIRSCH

interview, 2007

Tags: Edward Hirsch


No wonder poets sometimes have to seem
So much more businesslike than businessmen.
Their wares are so much harder to get rid of.

ROBERT FROST

"New Hampshire"

Tags: Robert Frost