Poet Quotes - Page 33

• the rest of my days I spend
  wandering: wondering
  what, anyway,
  was that sticky infusion, that rank flavor of blood, that
  poetry, by which I lived?

  Galway Kinnell

  Blood, Poetry, Flavor

  Galway Kinnell (2001). “A New Selected Poems”, p.73, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• Look at this poet William Carlos Williams: he is primitive and native, and his roots are in raw forest and violent places; he is word-sick and place-crazy. He admires strength, but for what? Violence! This is the cult of the frontier mind.

  Edward Dahlberg

  Strength, Crazy, Roots

  Edward Dahlberg (1967). “Alms for Oblivion”, U of Minnesota Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Both poet and painter want to reach the silence behind the language, the silence within the language. Both painter and poet want their work to shine not only in daylight but (by whatever illusionist magic) from within.

  Howard Nemerov

  Science, Silence, Shining

  Howard Nemerov (1978). “Figures of thought: speculations on the meaning of poetry & other essays”

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• The spiritual kinship between Lincoln and Whitman was founded upon their Americanism, their essential Westernism. Whitman had grown up without much formal education; Lincoln had scarcely any education. One had become the notable poet of the day; one the orator of the Gettsyburg Address. It was inevitable that Whitman as a poet should turn with a feeling of kinship to Lincoln, and even without any association or contact feel that Lincoln was his.

  Edgar Lee Masters

  Spiritual, Feelings, Essentials

  5 Copy quote

• I invented the colors of the vowels!--A black, E white, I red, O blue, U green--I made rules for the form and movement of each consonant, and, and with instinctive rhythms, I flattered myself that I had created a poetic language accessible, some day, to all the senses.

  Arthur Rimbaud

  Blue, Color, White

  8 Copy quote

• My verse
  has brought me
  no roubles to spare:
  no craftsmen have made
  mahogany chairs for my house.

  Vladimir Mayakovsky

  Poetry, House, Craftsman

  Vladimir Mayakovsky, “At The Top Of My Voice”

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is not possible, for a poet, writing in any language, to protect himself from the tragic elements in human life.... [ellipsis in source] Illness, old age, and death--subjects as ancient as humanity--these are the subjects that the poet must speak of very nearly from the first moment that he begins to speak.

  Louise Bogan

  Life, Writing, Poetry

  7 Copy quote

• Coleridge received the Person from Porlock
  And ever after called him a curse,
  Then why did he hurry to let him in?
  He could have hid in the house.

  Stevie Smith

  Poetry, House, Ever After

  Stevie Smith (1988). “New Selected Poems of Stevie Smith”, p.87, New Directions Publishing

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Poetry is the most direct and simple means of expressing oneself in words: the most primitive nations have poetry, but only quitewell developed civilizations can produce good prose. So don't think of poetry as a perverse and unnatural way of distorting ordinary prose statements: prose is a much less natural way of speaking than poetry is. If you listen to small children, and to the amount of chanting and singsong in their speech, you'll see what I mean.

  Northrop Frye

  Children, Mean, Thinking

  4 Copy quote

• If I am going to be a poet at all, I am going to be POET and not NEGRO POET.

  Countee Cullen

  Ifs

  Countee Cullen (2013). “Countee Cullen: Collected Poems: (American Poets Project #32)”, p.31, Library of America

  65 Copy quote

  Show source

• And me happiest when I compose poems:
  Love, power, the huzza of battle
  are something, are much:
  yet a poem includes them like a pool
  water and reflection.

  Irving Layton

  Reflection, Water, Poetry

  Irving Layton (2012). “A Wild Peculiar Joy: The Selected Poems”, p.23, McClelland & Stewart

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• I want a bedroom near the sky, an astrologer's cave
  Where I can fashion eclogues that are chaste and grave.

  John Ashbery

  Fashion, Sky, Astrology

  John Ashbery (1985). “A Wave: Poems”, p.7, Ardent Media

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Some certified nut
  Will try to tell you it's poetry,
  (It's extraordinary, it makes a great deal of sense)
  But watch out or he'll start with some
  New notion or other.

  John Ashbery

  Nuts, Poetry, Trying

  John Ashbery (1986). “Selected Poems”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• And we may be led, then, upward through more
  Powerful forms of poetry, past columns
  With peeling posters on them, to the country of indifference.
  Meanwhile if the swell diapasons, blooms
  Unhappily and too soon, the little people are nonetheless real.

  John Ashbery

  Country, Art, Powerful

  John Ashbery (1986). “Selected Poems”

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• The difference between poetry and rhetoric
  is being
  ready to kill
  yourself
  instead of your children.

  Audre Lorde

  Children, Differences, Poetry

  Audre Lorde (2012). “Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches”, p.106, Crossing Press

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

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

  Franz Grillparzer

  Character, Poetry, World

  4 Copy quote

• The manifestation of poetry in external life is formal perfection. True sentiment grows within, and art must represent internal phenomena externally.

  Franz Grillparzer

  Life, Art, Perfection

  4 Copy quote

• Why must ancients, and provided the same talent, be better than modern authors?
  Free to exploit the vast realm of the simpleand the natural, they did not have to be artificial in order to be original (which every artist aspires to be).

  Franz Grillparzer

  Art, Order, Poetry

  4 Copy quote

• The present is never poetic as it serves necessity, necessity, however, is prosaic.

  Franz Grillparzer

  Poetry, Poetic

  4 Copy quote

• Our poetry emulates the recent progress in military strategy: Our army's strength is the foot soldiers.

  Franz Grillparzer

  Strength, Military, Army

  4 Copy quote

• I understand the phrase "Honor the Women" all too well: the poet has probably a wife of his own, but he prefers to honor another.

  Franz Grillparzer

  Wife, Infidelity, Honor

  4 Copy quote

• The plot! The plot! What kind of plot could a poet possibly provide that is not surpassed by the thinking, feeling reader? Form alone is divine.

  Franz Grillparzer

  Thinking, Feelings, Plot

  4 Copy quote

• I was a tiny bug. Now a mountain. I was left behind. Now honored at the head. You healed my wounded hunger and anger, and made me a poet who sings about joy.

  Rumi

  Spiritual, Joy, Growth

  9 Copy quote

• But sometimes everything I write
  with the threadbare art of my eye
  seems a snapshot

  Robert Lowell

  Art, Eye, Writing

  Robert Lowell (1979). “Robert Lowell: a tribute”

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Those blessed structures, plot and rhyme--
  why are they no help to me now
  I want to make
  something imagined, not recalled?

  Robert Lowell

  Blessed, Poetry, Plot

  Robert Lowell (1979). “Robert Lowell: a tribute”

  13 Copy quote

  Show source