Poetry Is Quotes

• Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion.

  T. S. Eliot

  Poetry, Personality, Individual Talent

  The Sacred Wood "Tradition and the Individual Talent" (1920)

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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 deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.

  Khalil Gibran

  Pain, Reading Poetry, Joy

  Khalil Gibran “The New Frontier and Sand and Foam”, Library of Alexandria

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• Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away.

  Carl Sandburg

  Rainbow, Poetry, Going Away

  Carl Sandburg (2015). “Harvest Poems: 1910-1960”, p.77, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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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 spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.

  William Wordsworth

  Powerful, Poetry, Feelings

  Lyrical Ballads 2nd ed., preface (1802) See Dorothy Parker 24

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• Poetry is the journal of the sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air. Poetry is a search for syllables to shoot at the barriers of the unknown and the unknowable. Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away.

  Carl Sandburg

  Life, Animal, Air

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• Poetry is ordinary language raised to the Nth power. Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words.

  Paul Engle

  Ideas, Reading Poetry, Skins

  New York Times, February 17, 1957.

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• Poetry is ordinary language raised to the Nth power.

  Paul Engle

  Reading Poetry, Language And Power, Ordinary

  New York Times, February 17, 1957.

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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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• Poetry is man's rebellion against being what he is.

  James Branch Cabell

  Men, Uprising, Poetry

  1919 Jurgen.

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• You don't have to suffer to be a poet; adolescence is enough suffering for anyone.

  John Ciardi

  Inspirational, Sarcastic, Children

  1962 In the Saturday Review, Fall issue.

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• A true poet does not bother to be poetical. Nor does a nursery gardener scent his roses.

  Jean Cocteau

  Nurse, Rose, Poetry

  Jean Cocteau (1926*). “A Call to Order, Written Between the Years 1918 and 1926 and Including "Cock and Harlequin", "Professional Secrets", and Other Critical Essays”

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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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• Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.

  Rita Dove

  Powerful, Reading Poetry, Language

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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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• Poetry is all that is worth remembering in life.

  William Hazlitt

  Poetry, Remember

  William Hazlitt (1845). “Lectures on the English Poets”, p.2

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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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• Publishing a volume of verse is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo.

  Don Marquis

  Education, Learning, Knowledge

  Don Marquis, William McCollum (1982). “Selected letters of Don Marquis”, Northwoods Pr

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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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• He who draws noble delights from sentiments of poetry is a true poet, though he has never written a line in all his life.

  George Sand

  Poetry, Noble, Delight

  George Sand (1800). “The Haunted Pool: (La Mare Au Diable).”, p.20

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• Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits.

  Carl Sandburg

  Poetry, Literature, Synthesis

  Atlantic Monthly Mar. 1923 "Poetry Considered"

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• Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Beautiful, Mirrors, Poetry

  Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1840). “A defence of poetry. Essay on the literature, arts, and manners of the Athenians. Preface to the Banquet of Plato. The banquet”, p.33

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• Though lovers be lost love shall not.

  Dylan Thomas

  Love, Broken Heart, Heartbroken

  25 Poems (1936) "And Death Shall Have No Dominion." Cf. Romans 6:9

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• Ink runs from the corners of my mouth. There is no happiness like mine. I have been eating poetry.

  Mark Strand

  Running, Poetry, Ink

  "Eating Poetry" l. 1 (1980)

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