Poet Quotes - Page 17

• To write about the monstrous sense of alienation the poet feels in this culture of polarized hatreds is a way of staying sane. With the poem, I reach out to an audience equally at odds with official policy, and I celebrate our mutual humanness in an inhuman world.

  Maxine Kumin

  Writing, Odds, Hatred

  Maxine Kumin (2000). “Always Beginning: Essays on a Life in Poetry”

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• Poetry and preaching do not go well together; when the preacher mounts the pulpit the poet usually goes away.

  Edith Hamilton

  Poetry, Together, Pulpit

  Edith Hamilton (1957). “The Roman Way to Western Civilization”

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• I will not go so far as to say, with a living poet, that the world knows nothing of its greatest men; but there are forms of greatness, or at least of excellence, which "die and make no sign"; there are martyrs that miss the palm, but not the stake; heroes without the laurel, and conquerors without the triumph.

  George Augustus Henry Sala

  Hero, Greatness, Men

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• Poems reveal secrets when they are analyzed. The poet's pleasure in finding ingenious ways to enclose her secrets should be matched by the reader's pleasure in unlocking and revealing these secrets.

  Diane Wakoski

  Secret, Unlocking, Way

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• Academia is a graveyard of poets.

  Kathleen Raine

  Academia, Graveyard

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• Who were my mentors in poetry and literature? This is a matter of opinion. Some see in my books the influences of authors whose names, in my ignorance, I have not even heard, while others see the influences of poets whose names I have heard but whose writings I have not read. And what is my opinion? From whom did I receive nurture? Not every man remembers the name of the cow which supplied him with each drop of milk he has drunk.

  Shmuel Yosef Agnon

  Book, Writing, Ignorance

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• 20th century poetry is a piñata. Images break from the earth when the poet strikes it.

  Diane Glancy

  Poetry, Earth, Break

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• Five golden years, Heart of Mine, have we walked the way of life together, and there is not an hour I would have changed; there is no moment when I would have you other than you have been. It is the fashion these days, I know, to say that love ends at the altar, but it is not so. You and I have found the old dream of the world divinely true. It is neither a poet's fancy nor a trick of the imagination, but a thing of fadeless and unending beauty.

  Myrtle Reed

  Dream, Fashion, Heart

  Myrtle Reed (1906). “Later Love Letters of a Musician”

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• The fine gifts of temperament and imagination which are essential to the production of true poetry are often accompanied by morbid sensibility. The soul capable of ecstasy and transport must pay its price in suffering; he who walks upon the heights must sometimes grovel in the dust.

  Myrtle Reed

  Dust, Imagination, Soul

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• Contemporary poets are skeptical and suspicious even, or perhaps especially, about themselves. They publicly confess to being poets only reluctantly, as if they were a little ashamed of it. But in our clamorous times it's much easier to acknowledge your faults, at least if they're attractively packaged, than to recognize your own merits, since these are hidden deeper and you never quite believe in them yourself.

  Wislawa Szymborska

  Believe, Never Quit, Faults

  Wislawa Szymborska, Stanisław Barańczak, Clare Cavanagh (2000). “Poems, New and Collected, 1957-1997”, p.13, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• 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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• Whatever is genuine in social relations endures, despite of time, error, absence, and destiny; and that which has no inherent vitality had better die at once. A great poet has truly declared that constancy is no virtue, but a fact.

  Henry Theodore Tuckerman

  Destiny, Errors, Facts

  Henry Theodore Tuckerman (1850). “The optimist”, p.126

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• Who, except the poets, reads poetry?

  Babette Deutsch

  Poetry

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• Of all the arts the living of a life is perhaps the greatest; to live every moment of life with the same imaginative commitment as the poet brings to a special field.

  Kathleen Raine

  Art, Commitment, Special

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• It takes something of a poet to apprehend and get into the depth, the lusciousness, the spiritual life of a great poem. And so we must be in some way like God in order that we may see God as He is.

  Edwin Hubbel Chapin

  God, Spiritual, Order

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• The poet's habit of living should be set on a key so low that the common influences should delight him.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Keys, Delight, Common

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Mikics (2012). “The Annotated Emerson”, p.215, Harvard University Press

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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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• 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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• 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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• There is an old Arabic proverb, 'When the king puts the poet on his payroll, he cuts off the tongue of the poet', so throughout the ages, people in power have liked to control music, they used to throw songwriters in jail throughout history, and were assassinated.

  Pete Seeger

  Kings, Cutting, Jail

  "An Interview With Pete Seeger In Beacon, NY". Interview with Pete Mason, nysmusic.com. January 31, 2014.

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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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• A children's writer should, ideally, be a dedicated semi-lunatic, a kind of poet with a marvelous idea, who, preferably, when not committing the marvellous idea to paper, does something else of a quite different kind, so as to acquire new and rich experience.

  Joan Aiken

  Children, Ideas, Doe

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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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