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).
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.
You can tear a poem apart to see what makes it technically tick...You're back with the mystery of having been moved by words. The best craftsmanship always leaves holes and gaps in the works of the poem so that something that is not in the poem can creep, crawl, flash or thunder in.
thomas adam— "Notes on the Art of Poetry" (1951).
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
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
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.
antonin artaud— The Theatre and Its Double, Chapter 6 (1938, translated 1958).
The light of love, the purity of grace, The mind, the music breathing from her face, The heart whose softness harmonized the whole, And oh, that eye was in itself a soul!
lord byron— "The Bride of Abydos", Canto I, Stanza 6
Poetry is itself a thing of God; He made his prophets poets; and the more We feel of poesie do we become Like God in love and power, under-makers.
philip james bailey— Philip James Bailey, Festus (1813), Proem, line 5.
Our poetry now is the realization that we possess nothing. Anything therefore is a delight (since we do not posses it) and thus need not fear its loss.
john cage— John Cage, Silence: Lectures and Writings, "Lecture on Nothing" (1959).
Doeg, though without knowing how or why, Made still a blundering kind of melody; Spurr'd boldly on, and dash'd through thick and thin, Through sense and nonsense, never out nor in; Free from all meaning whether good or bad, And in one word, heroically mad.
john dryden— John Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel (1681), Part II, "Thick and thin", line 412.
A perfect poem is impossible. Once it had been written, the world would end.
robert graves— In The Paris Review, "Writers at Work: 4th series," interview with Peter Buckman and William Fifield (1969).
Still may syllables jar with time, Still may reason war with rhyme, Resting never!
Ben Jonson— Ben Jonson, Underwoods XXIX, "A Fit of Rhyme Against Rhyme".
Remember, writing poetry is like making love: one will never know whether one's own pleasure is shared.
cesare pavese— Cesare Pavese, This Business of Living, 1937-11-06
And, as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name.
william shakespeare— William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream (c. 1595-96), Act V, scene 1, line 14.
Good poetry seems so simple and natural a thing that when we meet it we wonder that all men are not always poets. Poetry is nothing but healthy speech.
Henry David Thoreau— Henry David Thoreau, Journal (29 November 1841).
For dear to gods and men is sacred song. Self-taught I sing; by Heaven and Heaven alone, The genuine seeds of poesy are sown.
homer— The Odyssey, Book XXII, line 382, Pope's translation
We hold that the most wonderful and splendid proof of genius is a great poem produced in a civilized age.
— Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay, On Milton (1825).
