Great Poetry Quotes - Page 3

• Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. From what I've tasted of desire, I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice I think I know enough of hate To say that for destruction ice Is also great And would suffice.

  Robert Frost

  Hate, Thinking, Fire

  "Fire and Ice" l. 5 (1923)

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• All that is gold does not glitter.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Being Strong, Travel, Fantasy Novels

  J.R.R. Tolkien (2012). “The Fellowship of the Ring: Being the First Part of The Lord of the Rings”, p.179, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The poem is not a thing we see; it is, rather, a light by which we may see.

  Robert Penn Warren

  Light, Poetry, May

  1958 In the Saturday Review, 22 Mar.

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• Poetry is a search for syllables to shoot at the barriers of the unknown and the unknowable.

  Carl Sandburg

  Poetry, Barriers, Syllables

  Carl Sandburg (2003). “The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg”, p.318, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Men, Sea, Rivers

  "Kubla Khan" l. 1 (1816)

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• Great poetry needs no interpreter other than a responsive heart.

  Helen Keller

  Heart, Needs, Interpreter

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• Michel Aflaq - is bad poetry wrapped in the guise of utopian politics, or great poetry wrapped in the guise of horrible politics.

  Elliott Colla

  Horrible, Utopian, Great Poet

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• The poem is a little myth of man's capacity of making life meaningful.

  Robert Penn Warren

  Meaningful, Men, Poetry

  1958 In the Saturday Review, 22 Mar.

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• Summer's lease hath all too short a date.

  William Shakespeare

  Summer, Poetry, Too Short

  Sonnet 18

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• I don't even think any stimulants really help writing. You talk to most guys and they say, "Hey. I wrote this." And they're out of their head or they had a few beers or a bottle of whiskey. You wake up the next morning, it's usually pretty crap. But you know Dylan Thomas wrote some great poetry. Brendan Behan. You never know but ultimately I'd say you have to get up early in the morning and you're usually sober when you write your good stuff; it's hard work. So alcohol, keep it for chilling out, fun, and having a good time. Not for work.

  Gavin Friday

  Morning, Fun, Hard Work

  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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• A great emotion is too selfish ; it takes into itself all the blood of the spirit, and the congestion leaves the hands too cold to write. Three sorts of emotion produce great poetry - strong but quick emotions, seized upon for art as soon as they have passed, but not before they have passed ; strong and deep emotions in their remembrance along time after ; and false emotions, that is to say, emotions felt in the intellect. Not insincerity, but a translated sincerity, is the basis of all art.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Strong, Art, Selfish

  Fernando Pessoa (1988). “Always Astonished: Selected Prose”, p.53, City Lights Books

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• Shakespeare wrote great poetry and preposterous plays. Who really cares, for example, which petty tyrant rules Milan? Or who succeeds to the throne of Denmark? Or why the barons ganged up on Richard II?

  Edward Abbey

  Play, Tyrants, Example

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.35, RosettaBooks

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• Great poetry must be admired, because it is great and because it is poetry, and so we admire it.

  Witold Gombrowicz

  Admire

  Witold Gombrowicz (2012). “Ferdydurke”, p.43, Yale University Press

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• ... what is great poetry, after all, but the continuation of the human voice after death?

  Erica Jong

  Voice, After Death, Continuation

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• All great poetry is dipped in the dyes of the heart.

  Edith Sitwell

  Heart, Poetry, Great Poet

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• Great poetry does not have to be technically intricate.

  James Fenton

  Doe, Intricate

  "To villanelle and back" by James Fenton, www.theguardian.com. October 5, 2002.

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• What raises great poetry above all else--it is the entire person and also the entire world.

  Franz Grillparzer

  Character, Poetry, World

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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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• 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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• The more serious poetry of the race has a philosophical structure of thought. It contains beliefs and conceptions in regard to the nature of man and the universe, God and the soul, fate and providence, suffering, evil and destiny. Great poetry always has, like the higher religion, a metaphysical content. It deals with the same august issues, experiences and conceptions as metaphysics or first philosophy.

  Joseph Alexander Leighton

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Fate

  Joseph Alexander Leighton (1919). “The field of philosophy: an outline of lectures on introduction to philosophy”

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• The most beautiful conception of immortality of which I know, and certainly one that by contrast shows the utter vulgarity of Christian ideas, is set forth in Pindar's second Olympian: after three or six lives in which a man has lived with strict justice and perfect integrity, he passes beyond the tower of Cronus to the fair realm that cannot be reached by land or sea, where gentle breezes from a placid ocean blow forever on the fields of asphodel. For a description, see Pindar. If the beauty of great poetry can commend a religion, here you have it.

  Revilo P. Oliver

  Beautiful, Christian, Integrity

  "Afterthoughts on Afterlife". "Instauration" Magazine, August 1980.

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• There are few greater treasures to be acquired in youth than great poetry-and prose-stored in the memory. At the time one may resent the labor of storing. But they sleep in the memory and awake in later years, illuminated by life and illuminating it.

  Richard Livingstone

  Memories, Sleep, Years

  Richard Livingstone (2013). “On Education”, p.101, Cambridge University Press

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