Great Poet Quotes - Page 5

• The saying, "The Magyar is much too lazy to be bored," is worth thinking about. Only the most subtle and active animals are capable of boredom.--A theme for a great poet would be God's boredom on the seventh day of creation.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Animal, Thinking, Boredom

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• A great poet does not express his or her self; he expresses all of our selves.

  Gary Snyder

  Self, Doe, Poet

  Gary Snyder, William Scott McLean (1980). “The Real Work: Interviews & Talks, 1964-1979”, p.65, New Directions Publishing

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• Even if great poetry continues to be written, it has retreated from the center of literary life. Though supported by a loyal coterie, poetry has lost the confidence that it speaks to and for the general culture.

  Dana Gioia

  Culture, Loyal, Speak

  Dana Gioia (2002). “Can Poetry Matter?: Essays on Poetry and American Culture”, Graywolf Pr

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• He who, in an enlightened and literary society, aspires to be a great poet, must first become a little child. He must take to pieces the whole web of his mind. He must unlearn much of that knowledge which has perhaps constituted hitherto his chief title to superiority. His very talents will be a hindrance to him.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Children, Poetry, Mind

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• I look at the great poets of the Soviet Union, like Anna Akhmatova, who endured far worse then anything we've seen or hopefully that we will ever see. If they could keep writing and keep a voice alive, keep people hopeful through their poetry, then I would be ashamed to stop and to give in. It would be really self-indulgent, unacceptable, and inexcusable to walk away from it.

  Sara Paretsky

  Writing, Self, Voice

  Source: www.progressive.org

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• The poem that comes closest to saying what I think is the one in Human Wishes called "Rusia en 1931." This poem is about [Osip] Mandelstam, who was a great poet and an anti-Stalinist, and [Cesar] Vallejo, who was a great poet and a Stalinist.

  Robert Hass

  Thinking, Wish, Poet

  Interview with Sarah Pollock, www.motherjones.com. March/April, 1997.

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• If you look at the recent Nobel Prize winners, one couldn't say that the work didn't matter and the political commitment did. Who had ever heard of the Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz? He is not politically involved. Octavio Paz is a great poet, also not politically involved. The Nobel Prize is for literature, for the quality of work over the years.

  Nadine Gordimer

  Commitment, Years, Political

  Source: progressive.org

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• I'm a boxing junkie, a serial-killer junkie, and a classical guitar junkie. All of these guys are great, poetic references.

  Mark Kozelek

  Guitar, Boxing, Guy

  Interview with Laura Snapes, pitchfork.com. May 23, 2012.

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• There's been no poet, no great poet in the history of poetry who hasn't also been a great reader of poetry. This is sometimes distressing to my students when I tell them this.

  Edward Hirsch

  Students, Sometimes, Poet

  "A Poet Is Born". Big Think Interview, bigthink.com. February 4, 2010.

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• I think it was W.H. Auden who said he was lucky that his first favorite poet was Thomas Hardy, who was a good but not a great poet, because if you are exposed to the greats too soon it can just squash you as a writer.

  David Duchovny

  Thinking, Squash, Lucky

  Source: www.bostonglobe.com

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• Now, I do say, "It's possible. You might be the first. I'm not saying it's impossible, but the odds are very much against you." All great poets have been great readers and the way to learn your craft in poetry is by reading other poetry and by letting it guide you.

  Edward Hirsch

  Reading, Odds, Crafts

  Source: bigthink.com

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• There's great poetry in the Old Testament and the New Testament. And I'm not interested in trying to prove whether this paragraph is as it was or as it should have been or should not be. My pursuit is to find the truth for me in those stories and make them apropos. The important thing is that people wrote them. These were inspirational stories, and you got to see them that way. If you don't, you'll get in trouble. So I'm not going to spend a lot of time trying to find out whether or not Mary was a virgin. What do I care about Mary being a virgin?

  Cecil Williams

  People, Trying, Important

  Source: www.psychologytoday.com

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• It's difficult not to color our perception of author's product with his personality. There are so many examples of this. What do we think of Ezra Pound - clearly a great poet and clearly kind of an asshole? You can say the same thing about Louis-Ferdinand Céline, who clearly was a Nazi sympathizer, and yet one of the great writers of the 20th century. It is tough, but there are enough examples around where we have to somehow find a way of separating the work from the artist and seeing what there is to see in the work, while also condemning the thoughts we see in the man.

  Salman Rushdie

  Artist, Men, Thinking

  Source: pen.org

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• But Racine's extraordinary powers as a writer become still more obvious when we consider that besides being a great poet he is also a great psychologist.

  Lytton Strachey

  Poetic, Psychologist, Obvious

  Lytton Strachey (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of Lytton Strachey (Illustrated)”, p.64, Delphi Classics

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• I think that poets can say, "What we want is for everybody on earth to wake up free from fear and with access to medicine and clean water and education." But I don't think poets have any special insight on how to get there. And the 20th century is a pretty good record of that because so many of the great poets were Stalinists: Vallejo, Neruda, Eluard, Aragon, etc. They wrote their odes to Lenin and Stalin. They glorified some of the most violent and grotesque dictatorships of the 20th century. And a lot of the ones who were not Stalinists were fascists or fascist sympathizers.

  Robert Hass

  Thinking, Medicine, Water

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• He who, in an enlightened and literary society, aspires to be a great poet, must first become a little child.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Children, Poetry, Littles

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• England still waits for the supreme moment of her literature--for the great poet who shall voice her, or, better still, for the thousand little poets whose voices shall pass into our common talk.

  E. M. Forster

  Voice, Poetry, Waiting

  E. M. Forster (2013). “Delphi Collected Works of E. M. Forster (Illustrated)”, p.733, Delphi Classics

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• genius is original, unique; and in whatever form it may develop itself is the greatest gift that can be given to man, the strongest known link between the material life we have and the spiritual life that we can only guess at. Every great poet, painter, or musician - every inventor or man of science, every fine actor or orator, comes to us as the exponent of something diviner than we know. We cannot understand it, but we feel it, and acknowledge it.

  Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

  Spiritual, Men, Unique

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• Rare almost as great poets, rarer, perhaps, than veritable saints and martyrs; are consummate men of business. A man, to be excellent in this way, requires a great knowledge of character, with that exquisite tact which feels unerringly the right moment when to act. A discreet rapidity must pervade all the movements of his thought and action. He must be singularly free from vanity, and is generally found to be an enthusiast who has the art to conceal his enthusiasm.

  Arthur Helps

  Art, Business, Character

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• It's a big thing to call yourself a poet. All I can say is that I have always written poems. I don't think I'm interested in any discussion about whether I'm a good poet, a bad poet or a great poet. But I am sure, I want to write great poems. I think every poet should want that.

  Clive James

  Writing, Thinking, Want

  "Clive James on turning his ‘last time on earth’ into a writing wellspring". Interview with Art Beat, www.pbs.org. December 3, 2013.

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• A visual experience is vitalizing. Whereas to write great poetry, to draw continuously on one's inner life, is not merely exhausting, it is to keep alight a consuming fire.

  Kenneth Clark

  Writing, Fire, Burning

  Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Martin Dieterle, Kenneth Clark, Salander-O'Reilly Galleries (1996). “Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796-1875): late paintings”

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• As a fairly innocent teenager, growing up in a village in Wales, I just thought, "God, I would like to go and hang about Soho and write great poetry and try to avoid drinking myself to death."

  Andrew Davies

  Growing Up, Teenager, Drinking

  Source: collider.com

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• Bangladesh is a world of metaphor, of high and low theater, of great poetry and music. You talk to a rice farmer and you find a poet. You get to know a sweeper of the streets and you find a remarkable singer.

  Jean Houston

  Poetry And Music, World, Singers

  Source: digitalseance.wordpress.com

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• You can't be too influenced by a great poet. You simply have to live through it.

  Kenneth Koch

  Poet

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• No more than a famous master can be replaced and another take over the completion of the half-finished painting he has left behind can the great poet and thinker, the great statesman and the great soldier, be replaced. For their activity lies always in the province of art. It is not mechanically trained but inborn by God's grace.

  Adolf Hitler

  Art, Lying, Grace

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