Poetry Quotes
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A speech is poetry: cadence, rhythm, imagery, sweep! A speech reminds us that words, like children, have the power to make dance the dullest beanbag of a heart.
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More Poetry Quotes
I'll publish, right or wrong: Fools are my theme, let satire be my song.
lord byron— 1809 English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, l.5-6.
Something of glass about her, of dead water, Chills and holds us, Far more fatal than painted flesh or the lodestone of live hair, This despair of crystal brilliance.
louis macneice— 1935 Poems,'Circe'.
My soul is awakened, my spirit is soaring; And carried aloft on the wings of the breeze; For above and around me the wild wind is roaring, Arousing to rapture the earth and the seas.
anne brontë— 1846 'Line Composed in a Wood on a Windy Day', in Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell.
There's something in a flying horse, There's something in a huge balloon.
william wordsworth— William Wordsworth, Peter Bell. Prologue, Stanza 1.
We dance round in a ring and suppose, But the Secret sits in the middle and knows
robert frost— 1942 'The Secret Sits', complete poem.
Poetry is a rich, full-blooded whistle, cracked ice crunching in pails, the night that numbers the leaf, the duet of two nightingales, the sweet pea, that has run wild, Creation's tears in shoulder blades.
wallace stevens— Quoted in Life, 13 June 1960.
[I] do not like poems that resemble hay compressed into a geometrically perfect cube. I like it when the hay, unkempt, uncombed, with dry berries mixed in it, thrown together gaily and freely, bounces along atop some truck—and more, if there are some lovely and healthy lasses atop the hay—and better yet if the branches catch at the hay, and some of it tumbles to the road.
yevgeny yevtushenko— New York Times (2 February 1986)
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
lord byron— Letter to Annabella Milbanke (29 November 1813).
Poetry is man's rebellion against being what he is.
james branch cabell— James Branch Cabell, Jurgen, A Comedy of Justice (1919).
Human beings love poetry. They don't even know it sometimes... whether they're the songs of Bono, or the songs of Justin Bieber... they're listening to poetry.
maya angelou
Coffee, (which makes the politician wise, And see through all things with his half-shut eyes), Sent up in vapours to the baron's brain, New stratagems, the radiant lock to gain.
Alexander Pope— The Rape of the Lock, Canto III, line 117.
Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.
Aristotle— Poetics (335) 1451b 6.
He who draws noble delights from sentiments of poetry is a true poet, though he has never written a line in all his life.
George Sand— George Sand, The Haunted Pool (1890) ch. 2.
Still may syllables jar with time, Still may reason war with rhyme, * Resting never!
Ben Jonson— Ben Jonson, Underwoods, Fit of Rhyme Against Rhyme.
My mother asked me what I wanted for my birthday, so I said I wanted to read poetry with her.
guy Johnson
And glory, like the phoenix midst her fires, Exhales her odours, blazes, and expires.
lord byron— 1809 English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, l.959-60.
Take something commoplace, clean it and polish it, light it so that it produces the same effect of youth and freshness and originality and spontaneity as it did originally, and you have done a poet’s job. The rest is literature.
jean cocteau— Mettez un lieu commun en place, nettoyez-le, frottez-le, éclairez-le de telle sorte qu'il frappe avec sa jeunesse et avec la même fraîcheur, le même jet qu'il avait à sa source, vous ferez œuvre de poète. Tout le reste est littérature.
— "Le Secret Professionnel" (originally published 1922); later published in Collected Works Vol. 9 (1950)
The crown of literature is poetry.
Matthew Arnold— Matthew Arnold, Essays in Criticism (1888) "Count Leo Tolstoi".
To see the Summer Sky Is Poetry, though never in a Book it lie True Poems flee
Emily Dickinson— Poem 1472.
The writing of a poem is like a child throwing stones into a mineshaft. You compose first, then you listen for the reverberation.
james fenton— James Fenton, The Independent on Sunday (24 June 1990).
Poetry is a game of loser-take-all.
jean-luc godard— From the film Pierrot le Fou (1965).
Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth, by calling imagination to the help of reason.
samuel johnson— Samuel Johnson, The Lives of the English Poets (1781) "Milton".
Most people ignore most poetry because most poetry ignore most people.
Adrian Mitchell— Adrian Mitchell, Poems (1964) Preface
A good poem helps to change the shape and significance of the universe, helps to extend everyone's knowledge of himself and the world around him.
dylan thomas— Dylan Thomas, Quite Early One Morning (New York: New Directions, 1954) "On Poetry", pp. 192-93.
Made poetry a mere mechanic art.
william cowper— William Cowper, Table Talk, line 654.
To write a verse or two, is all the praise That I can raise.
George Herbert— George Herbert, The Church, Praise.
These pearls of thought in Persian gulfs were bred, Each softly lucent as a rounded moon; The diver Omar plucked them from their bed, FitzGerald strung them on an English thread.
james russell lowell— James Russell Lowell, In a Copy of Omar Khayyam.
Old-fashioned poetry, but choicely good.
Izaak Walton— Izaak Walton, The Compleat Angler (1653-1655), Part I, Chapter IV
