Peter Porter Quotes

• Poetry is either language lit up by life or life lit up by language

  Peter Porter

  Language, Lit, Poetry Is

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• A poem is a form of refrigeration that stops language going bad.

  Peter Porter

  Poetry, Language, Form

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• Somewhere at the heart of the universe sounds the true mystic note: Me.

  Peter Porter

  Heart, Sound, Notes

  Peter Porter (1970). “The last of England”, Not Avail

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• Love without sex is still the most efficient form of hell known to man.

  Peter Porter

  Sex, Men, Hell

  Peter Porter (1970). “The last of England”, Not Avail

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• A professional is one who believes he has invented breathing.

  Peter Porter

  Believe, Breathing

  Peter Porter (1970). “The last of England”, Not Avail

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• I am moving deeper into my own brain.

  Peter Porter

  Moving, Brain, Conformity

  Peter Porter (1972). “Preaching to the converted”, Not Avail

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• Writing poetry is the only form of literary labour which gives me entire satisfaction.

  Peter Porter

  Writing, Giving, Satisfaction

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• We cannot know what John of Leyden felt Under the Bishop 's tongs - we can only Walk in temperate London, our educated city, Wishing to cry as freely as they did who died In the Age of Faith. We have our loneliness And our regret with which to build an eschatology.

  Peter Porter

  Regret, Loneliness, Cities

  Peter Porter (1989). “A Porter Selected: Poems, 1959-1989”, Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press

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• Redeemers always reach the world too late. God dies, we live; God lives, we die. Our fate.

  Peter Porter

  Fate, Too Late, World

  Peter Porter (1992). “The chair of Babel”, Oxford University Press, USA

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• In the New World, happiness is enforced.

  Peter Porter

  World, New World

  Peter Porter (1989). “A Porter Selected: Poems, 1959-1989”, Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press

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• Much have I travelled in the realms of gold for which I thank the Paddington and Westminster Public Libraries.

  Peter Porter

  Library, Gold, Realms

  Peter Porter (2010). “The Rest on the Flight: Selected Poems”, p.15, Pan Macmillan

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• I started off in England and very few people knew I was Australian. I mean, the clues were in the poems, but they didn't read them very carefully, and so for years and years I was considered completely part of the English poetry scene.

  Peter Porter

  Mean, Years, People

  Interview with John Kinsella, www.johnkinsella.org. 1998.

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• In other words the pictures are in a kind of relationship with each other which is touching only at points rather than pictures being illustrations of poems or poems extrapolations of the pictures.

  Peter Porter

  Relationship, Illustration, Touching

  "John Kinsella interviews Peter Porter". www.johnkinsella.org. 1993.

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• I have no fondness for pure form at all.

  Peter Porter

  Affection, Form, Pure

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• An old art spreading rumours about / Paradise, it begs outside the gates / Of the gods: the active gods come out.

  Peter Porter

  Art, Paradise, Rumours

  Peter Porter (2010). “The Rest on the Flight: Selected Poems”, p.73, Pan Macmillan

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• Auden is an accomplished rhymer and Shakespeare is not.

  Peter Porter

  Accomplished, Auden

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• It is Australian innocence to love The naturally excessive and be proud Of a thoroughbred gelding who ran fast.

  Peter Porter

  Sports, Proud, Innocence

  Peter Porter (1961). “Once bitten, twice bitten: poems”

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