POETRY QUOTES

quotations about poetry

Poetry quote

The poem ... is a little myth of man's capacity of making life meaningful. And in the end, the poem is not a thing we see -- it is, rather, a light by which we may see -- and what we see is life.

ROBERT PENN WARREN

Saturday Review, March 22, 1958

Tags: Robert Penn Warren


If after I read a poem, the world looks like that poem for 24 hours or so, I'm sure it's a good one.

ELIZABETH BISHOP

One Art: Letters

Tags: Elizabeth Bishop


And then there is, of course, always, and inevitably, this spume of poetry that's just blowing out of the sulphurous flue-holes of the earth. Just masses of poetry. It's unstoppable, it's uncorkable. There's no way to make it end. If we could just--just stop. For one year. If everybody could stop publishing their poems. No more. Stop it. Just--everyone. Every poet. Just stop. But of course that's totally unfair to the poets who are just starting out.

NICHOLSON BAKER

The Anthologist

Tags: Nicholson Baker


Poetry will wither on the vine if you don't regularly come back to the simplest fundamentals of the poem: rhythm, rhyme, simple subjects--love, death, war.

JAMES FENTON

The New Yorker, July 25, 1994

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Poetry cannot afford to lose its fundamentally self-delighting inventiveness, its joy in being a process of language as well as a representation of things in the world.

SEAMUS HEANEY

The Redress of Poetry

Tags: Seamus Heaney


Poetry gives us permission. It reminds us that we are loved and we are human. Its rhythms are those of the heartbeat. Its rhymes lure us into remembering more than we ever imagine. It's a form of song, with a quieter tune.

MOLLY FISK

"Poetry Is All Yours", Women's Voices for Change, April 9, 2016


And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

PABLO NERUDA

"Tonight I Can Write"

Tags: Pablo Neruda


What's poetry? It's not real but maybe it's more than real. It's dreaming while you're awake.

CARYL CHURCHILL

A Dream Play

Tags: Caryl Churchill


Everybody can write poetry, just like everybody knows how to make love.

GAO XINGJIAN

The Other Shore

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

JOHN ASHBERY

International Herald Tribune, October 2, 1989

Tags: John Ashbery


Poetry is an orphan of silence.

CHARLES SIMIC

attributed, Stealing Glimpses: Of Poetry, Poets, and Things in Between

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Mediocrity in poets has never been tolerated by either men, or gods, or booksellers.

HORACE

Ars Poetica

Tags: Horace


Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.

ROBERT FROST

attributed, Robert Frost: The Trial by Existence

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If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry.

EMILY DICKINSON

letter to T. W. Higginson, c. 1870

Tags: Emily Dickinson


I can't think of a case where poems changed the world, but what they do is they change people's understanding of what's going on in the world.

SEAMUS HEANEY

This Week, April 15, 2004

Tags: Seamus Heaney


All the translations of a poem in all possible languages may add nuance to nuance and, by a kind of mutual retouching, by correcting one another, may give an increasingly faithful picture of the poem they translate, yet they will never give the inner meaning of the original.

HENRI BERGSON

The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics

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True poetry is a function of awakening. It awakens us, but it must retain the memory of previous dreams.

GASTON BACHELARD

introduction, Water and Dreams

Tags: Gaston Bachelard


Not to be too dogmatic, I don't believe there is anything such thing as free verse, as long as the poet is using language, the poet can't break enough rules to escape and still be understood.

WALTER BARGEN

interview, Cavalier Literary Couture

Tags: Walter Bargen


Poetry is a river; many voices travel in it; poem after poem moves along in the exciting crests and falls of the river waves. None is timeless; each arrives in an historical context; almost everything, in the end, passes. But the desire to make a poem, and the world's willingness to receive it--indeed the world's need of it--these never pass.

MARY OLIVER

A Poetry Handbook

Tags: Mary Oliver


Not philosophy, after all, not humanity, just sheer joyous power of song, is the primal thing in poetry.

MAX BEERBOHM

And Even Now

Tags: Max Beerbohm