Poetry Is Quotes - Page 25

• Writing poetry is a pleasure,...a pleasure out of hell

  Kenneth Slessor

  Writing, Hell, Pleasure

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• The best thing about conceptual poetry is that it doesn’t need to be read. You don’t have to read it. As a matter of fact, you can write books, and you don’t even have to read them. My books, for example, are unreadable. All you need to know is the concept behind them. Here’s every word I spoke for a week. Here’s a year’s worth of weather reports... and without ever having to read these things, you understand them.

  Kenneth Goldsmith

  Book, Writing, Years

  "Against Expression: Kenneth Goldsmith in Conversation". Poets.org Interview, www.poets.org. February 19, 2011.

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• Poetry is always close kin to the impossible, isn't it?

  Reginald Shepherd

  Impossible

  Reginald Shepherd (2007). “Orpheus in the Bronx: Essays on Identity, Politics, and the Freedom of Poetry”

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• Mab Jones' poetry is suffused with a cool wit and a wisdom beyond her years. She is a superb performance poet in the tradition of Joolz Denby and Pam Ayres and, like them, her work is beautifully layered and contains bittersweet depths.

  Phill Jupitus

  Years, Depth, Bittersweet

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• Poetry is not a waiting room where one stays overnight...every word is war.

  Rolf Dieter Brinkmann

  War, Waiting Rooms, Waiting

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• I love contemporary poetry because it moves between what we call poetry and what we call philosophy. It joins these fields and makes writing more natural, as in how it is lived in the person. We don’t separate thinking from feeling in real life, so why should we separate it in writing?

  Etel Adnan

  Philosophy, Real, Moving

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• Poetry is the communication through words of certain experiences that can be communicated in no other way.

  John Drinkwater

  Communication, Way, Certain

  John Drinkwater (1922). “The Lyric: An Essay”, p.8, Library of Alexandria

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• Reading the very best writers—let us say Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Tolstoy—is not going to make us better citizens. Art is perfectly useless, according to the sublime Oscar Wilde, who was right about everything. He also told us that all bad poetry is sincere. Had I the power to do so, I would command that these words be engraved above every gate at every university, so that each student might ponder the splendor of the insight.

  Harold Bloom

  Art, Reading, Sublime

  Harold Bloom (2014). “The Western Canon”, p.31, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Poetry is the essence of everything, and it’s through deep contact with reality and living fully that you reach poetry. Very often I see photographers cultivating the strangeness or awkwardness of a scene, thinking it is poetry. No. Poetry is two elements which are suddenly conflict — a spark between two elements. But it’s given very seldom, and you can’t look for it. It’s like if you look for inspiration. No, it just comes by enriching yourself and living.

  Henri Cartier-Bresson

  Inspiration, Reality, Thinking

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• The specific excellence of verbal expression in poetry is to be clear without being low.

  Aristotle

  Expression, Excellence, Lows

  Aristotle, Gerald Frank Else (1970). “Poetics”, p.58, University of Michigan Press

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• Poetry is a section of river-fog and moving boat-lights, delivered between bridges and whistles, so one says, 'Oh!' and another, 'How?'

  Carl Sandburg

  Moving, Light, Fog

  Carl Sandburg (2003). “The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg”, p.319, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Poetry is a kinetic arrangement of static syllables.

  Carl Sandburg

  Static, Arrangements, Syllables

  Carl Sandburg (2003). “The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg”, p.319, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Poetry is an enumeration of birds, bees, babies, butterflies, bugs, bambinos, babayagas, and bipeds, beating their way up bewildering bastions.

  Carl Sandburg

  Baby, Butterfly, Bird

  Carl Sandburg (1928). “Smoke and steel: Slabs of the sunburnt West. Good morning, America”, Harcourt, Brace and World

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• Poetry is the establishment of a metaphorical link between white butterfly-wings and the scraps of torn-up love-letters.

  Carl Sandburg

  Butterfly, Wings, White

  Carl Sandburg (2003). “The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg”, p.319, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Poetry is a mystic, sensuous mathematics of fire, smoke-stacks, waffles, pansies, people, and purple sunsets.

  Carl Sandburg

  Sunset, Fire, Purple

  Carl Sandburg (2003). “The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg”, p.319, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Poetry is either something that lives like fire inside you

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Fire, Poetry, Fire Inside

  F. Scott Fitzgerald (2010). “A Life in Letters”, p.750, Simon and Schuster

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• Poetry is the universal possession of mankind, revealing itself everywhere, and at all times, in hundreds and hundreds of men.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Men, Revealing, Mankind

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johann Peter Eckermann (2014). “Conversations of Goethe with Johann Peter Eckermann”, p.211, Ravenio Books

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• Prose is when all the lines except the last go on to the end. Poetry is when some of them fall short of it.

  Jeremy Bentham

  Fall, Poetry, Goes On

  In M. St. J. Packe 'The Life of John Stuart Mill' (1954) bk. 1, ch. 2

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• If Rumi is the most-read poet in America today, Coleman Barks is in good part responsible. His ear for the truly divine madness in Rumi’s poetry is really remarkable.

  Huston Smith

  America, Ears, Today

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• Poetry is a break for freedom.

  David Whyte

  Break

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• Poetry is the exquisite expression of exquisite impressions.

  Philibert Joseph Roux

  Expression, Poetry, Impression

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• Poetry is the only art people haven't learned to consume like soup.

  W. H. Auden

  Art, People, Poetry

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• Poetry is the utterance of deep and heart-felt truth - the true poet is very near the oracle.

  Edwin Hubbel Chapin

  Heart, Poetry, Oracles

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• As poetry is the harmony of words, so music is that of notes.

  John Dryden

  Music, Harmony, Notes

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• At times it has been doubtful to me if Emerson really knows or feels what Poetry is at its highest, as in the Bible, for instance, or Homer or Shakspeare. I see he covertly or plainly likes best superb verbal polish, or something old or odd

  Walt Whitman

  Poetry, Likes, Odd

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