Poet Quotes - Page 15

• A poem's life and death dependeth still
  Not on the poet's wits, but reader's will.

  Alexander Brome

  Life And Death, Wit, Reader

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• How can one express the indefinable sensations that one experiences while writing an instrumental composition that has no definite subject? It is a purely lyrical process. It is a musical confession of the soul, which unburdens itself through sounds just as a lyric poet expresses himself through poetry...As the poet Heine said, 'Where words leave off, music begins.'

  Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

  Music, Writing, Soul

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• I never have restricted myself into a frame of a particular technique. My techniques are determined simultaneously along with the subjects of my works. It is similar to the works of a poet, the form of a poem is determined at the same time as its content.

  Guity Novin

  Technique, Determined, Form

  Etelaat newspaper, Iran, June 07, 1973.

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• Honor to the idealists, whether philosophers or poets. They have improved us by mingling with our daily pursuits great and transcendent conceptions. They have thrown around our sensual life the grandeur of a better, and drawn us up from contacts with the temporal and the selfish to communion with beauty and truth and goodness.

  Edwin Hubbel Chapin

  Selfish, Sensual, Honor

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• History and legend and art and romance meet and mingle to create that indefinable sorcery of Venice. It is like nothing on earth except a poet's dream.

  Lilian Whiting

  Dream, Art, Venice

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• I was strong and tough enough and charming. / How else is a fat Jew lesbian poet gonna get by? / Listening to the radio, staying home, staying alone, like / they mean us to. / Who means you to be left out? / Who don't?

  Elana Dykewomon

  Strong, Mean, Home

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• a poet will even face death when he sees his people oppressed.

  Carolina Maria de Jesus

  People, Faces, Oppressed

  Carolina Maria de Jesus (2005). “Beyond All Pity”

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• Our emotions are ever-changing and infinitely varied, but the words with which we describe them are fixed and rigid. Our life is like quicksilver, our vocabulary like steel. Sometimes a consummate poet succeeds in rendering the quality of life in words. For the rest of us, this is not possible.

  Laura Huxley

  Vocabulary, Life Is Like, Quality

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• Lesbians are the poets of the humanity of women.

  Nicole Brossard

  Humanity, Sexuality

  Nicole Brossard (1988). “The aerial letter”, Womens Pr

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• S. E. Smith's I Live in a Hut has a deceptively simple title, considering that the brain in that hut contains galaxies-worth of invention: At night when your soldiers are praying ceaselessly for less rain and more underwear my soldiers make underwear out of rain. These poems seesaw between despair and delight but delight is winning the battle. Smith is a somersaulting tightrope walker of a poet and her poems will make you look at anything and everything with new eyes: For days I tried to rub the new freckle // off my hand until I realized what it was / and began to grant it its sovereignty.

  Matthea Harvey

  Rain, Eye, Simple

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• Chloe Honum's brilliant first book The Tulip-Flame traces an identity forming within radically divergent but interlocking systems: a family traumatized by the mother's suicide, a failed relationship, the practice of ballet, a garden-each strict, exacting. And with 'a crow's sky-knowing mind,' Honum in every case transfigures emotion by way of elegant language and formal restraint. Chloe Honum is 'one astounding flame' of a poet, and I predict a long-lasting one.

  Claudia Emerson

  Mother, Suicide, Book

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• Fighting for one's freedom, struggling towards being free, is like struggling to be a poet or a good Christian or a good Jew or a good Muslim or good Zen Buddhist. You work all day long and achieve some kind of level of success by nightfall, go to sleep and wake up the next morning with the job still to be done. So you start all over again.

  Maya Angelou

  Christian, Buddhist, Morning

  "Bill Moyers Journal", billmoyers.com. November 21, 1973.

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• I've been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet, a pawn and a king
  I've been up and down and over and out and I know one thing
  Each time I find myself flat on my face
  I pick myself up and get back in the race

  Frank Sinatra

  Kings, Race, Pirate

  Song: That's Life, Album: That's Life

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• Poets think in short lines. Unless you're Samuel Beckett, Twitter might be more difficult for novelists.

  Kenneth Goldsmith

  Thinking, Novelists, Lines

  Source: logger.believermag.com

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• I try to avoid calling myself a poet because I think that's something someone else has to call you. It's like bragging.

  Dorianne Laux

  Thinking, Trying, Calling

  "Road Trip". Interview with Ali Liebegott, logger.believermag.com. April 2, 2013.

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• I kind of think that artists throughout history, poets throughout history have been criticized for sharing what's on people's minds and I don't think it's any different now.

  Russell Simmons

  Artist, Thinking, People

  Source: www.foxnews.com

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• I do not understand why any poet or writer would run for office; that's a different sense of who you are. I'm just a poet. I am as truthful as I can be. That makes me an artist. I heed the people; I do not lead the people.

  Nikki Giovanni

  Running, Artist, Office

  "Nikki Giovanni - Celebrity Guest Author Interview". Interview with Cheryl Holloway, www.cherylholloway.net. February 14, 2014.

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• The only advice [for new writers and poets] I can offer is to be yourself: not the self someone else wants you to be, but the self you are. Enjoy yourself and your life. But most of all travel and eat. That's how we learn.

  Nikki Giovanni

  Being Yourself, Advice, Want

  "Nikki Giovanni - Celebrity Guest Author Interview". Interview with Cheryl Holloway, www.cherylholloway.net. February 14, 2014.

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• I hear poetry whenever I turn on the radio. Eminem is a better poet than just about everybody. He's better than Billy Collins; he's better than Richard Wilbur; he's better than me.

  Sherman Alexie

  Radio, Turns, Turn-on

  "Born again, again". Interview with Dale Bridges for Boulder Weekly, dalebridges.org. 2007.

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• I am the poet of the high wire - I never do stunts; I do theatrical performances.

  Philippe Petit

  Wire, Stuntman, Theatrical

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• Language becomes a prison house only poets can escape...if we do not reject any strict distinctions between ordinary usage and figures of speech.

  Arthur Quinn

  House, Speech, Ordinary

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• Who, except the poets, reads poetry?

  Babette Deutsch

  Poetry

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• Subtract from many modern poets all that may be found in Shakespeare, and trash will remain.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  May, Modern, Trash

  Charles Caleb Colton (1821). “Lacon: or, Many things in few words”, p.214

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• Shall we speak of the inspiration of a poet or a priest, and not of the heart impelled by love and self-devotion to the lowliest work in the lowliest way of life?

  Charles Dickens

  Inspiration, Heart, Humility

  Charles Dickens (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Charles Dickens (Illustrated)”, p.17059, Delphi Classics

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• We are apt to consider Shakespeare only as a poet; but he was certainly one of the greatest moral philosophers that ever lived.

  Mary Wortley Montagu

  Philosopher, Moral

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