Great Poetry Quotes

• Great poetry is always written by somebody straining to go beyond what he can do.

  Stephen Spender

  Poetry, Great Poet, Can Do

  The New York Times, March 26, 1961.

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• A poet's work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep.

  Salman Rushdie

  Courage, Sleep, Names

  The Satanic Verses pt. 2 (1988)

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• Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Life, Poetry, World

  A Defence of Poetry (written 1821) See Auden 22; Auden 39; Andrew Fletcher 1; Samuel Johnson 22; Twain 104

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• Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Beauty, Thoughtful, Poetry

  "The Poetic Principle". Essay by Edgar Allan Poe, 1850.

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• Poetry is the journal of a sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air.

  Carl Sandburg

  Writing, Animal, Air

  Carl Sandburg (2003). “The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg”, p.317, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• To have great poets, there must be great audiences.

  Walt Whitman

  Learning, Science, Discovery

  Walt Whitman, Floyd Stovall (2007). “Prose Works 1892, Volume II: Collect and Other Prose”, p.521, NYU Press

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• Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth.

  Samuel Johnson

  Art, Poetry, Uniting

  Samuel Johnson (1822). “The Lives of the Most Eminent Poets: With Critical Observations on Their Works”, p.120

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• Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.

  Robert Frost

  Poetry, Emotion, Found

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  But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep.

  Robert Frost

  Love, Inspirational, Tattoo

  "Stopping byWoods on a Snowy Evening" l. 13 (1923)

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• Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.

  Leonard Cohen

  Writing, Poetry, Ashes

  "My favourite word in songwriting history is 'that'" by Laura Barton, www.theguardian.com. May 31, 2007.

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• If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.

  Emily Dickinson

  Taken, Writing, Poetry

  Quoted in Martha Bianchi, Life and Letters of Emily Dickinson (1924)

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• Do not go gentle into that good night.

  Dylan Thomas

  Tattoo, Good Night, Goodnight

  "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" l. 16 (1952)

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• The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Funny, Food, Sarcasm

  "Alarms And Discursions". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1910.

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• The woods are lovely, dark, and deep but I have promises to keep...

  Robert Frost

  Tattoo, Running, Taken

  "Stopping byWoods on a Snowy Evening" l. 13 (1923)

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  I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach.

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  Love, Valentines Day, Cute Boyfriend

  1850 Poems,'Sonnets from the Portuguese', sonnet 43.

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• If you cannot be a poet, be the poem.

  David Carradine

  Inspirational, Life, Being Yourself

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• The poet is the priest of the invisible.

  Wallace Stevens

  Poetry, Invisible, Priests

  Opus Posthumous (1957) "Adagia"

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• It is the job of poetry to clean up our word-clogged reality by creating silences around things.

  Stephane Mallarme

  Jobs, Reality, Creating

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• A poem begins with a lump in the throat

  Robert Frost

  Inspirational, Writing, Poetry

  Robert Frost, Mark Richardson (2007). “The Collected Prose of Robert Frost”, p.84, Harvard University Press

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• Poetry is plucking at the heartstrings, and making music with them.

  Dennis Gabor

  Heart, Poetry, Poetic

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• No man was ever yet a great poet, without being at the same time a profound philosopher.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Time, Men, Profound

  Biographia Literaria ch. 15 (1817)

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• and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you

  e. e. cummings

  Moon, Sun, Romantic Poetry

  E. E. Cummings (2013). “Like a perhaps hand: Poems. Gedichte”, p.45, C.H.Beck

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• here is the deepest secret nobody knows (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide) and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

  e. e. cummings

  I Love You, Spiritual, Stars

  E. E. Cummings (2013). “Like a perhaps hand: Poems. Gedichte”, p.45, C.H.Beck

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• Poetry is a language in which man explores his own amazement.

  Christopher Fry

  Men, Prose And Poetry, Language

  Christopher Fry (1997). “The Early Days”

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• 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

  Meaningful, Writing, Men

  1958 In the Saturday Review, 22 Mar.

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