Poetry Is Quotes - Page 31

• Writing poetry is a state of free float.

  Margaret Atwood

  Writing, Poetry, States

  Margaret Atwood (2006). “Waltzing Again: New and Selected Conversations with Margaret Atwood”

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• Poetry is important. No less than science, it seeks a hold upon reality, and the closeness of its approach is the test of its success.

  Babette Deutsch

  Reality, Poetry, Important

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• Poetry is at least an elegance and at most a revelation.

  Robert Fitzgerald

  Poetry, Elegance, Revelations

  Robert Fitzgerald (1993). “The Third Kind of Knowledge: Memoirs & Selected Writings”, p.278, New Directions Publishing

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• For me, poetry is an impish attempt to paint the colour of the wind.

  Maxwell Bodenheim

  Wind, Poetry, Paint

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• Poetry is perfect verbs hunting for elusive nouns.

  J. Patrick Lewis

  Writing, Hunting, Perfect

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• All high poetry is infinite; it is as the first acorn, which contained all oaks potentially.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Poetry, Firsts, Acorns

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (1852). “A defence of poetry. Essay on the literature, arts, and manners of the Athenians. Preface to the Banquet of Plato. The banquet”, p.35

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• I have said that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity: the emotion is contemplated till, by a species of reaction, the tranquillity gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind.

  William Wordsworth

  Powerful, Poetry, Feelings

  William Wordsworth, Dorothy Wordsworth (1815). “Poems”, p.388

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• By failing to read or listen to poets, society dooms itself to inferior modes of articulation, those of the politician, the salesman, or the charlatan. In other words, it forfeits its own evolutionary potential. For what distinguishes us from the rest of the animal kingdom is precisely the gift of speech. Poetry is not a form of entertainment and in a certain sense not even a form of art, but it is our anthropological, genetic goal. Our evolutionary, linguistic beacon.

  Joseph Brodsky

  Art, Animal, Goal

  Joseph Brodsky's opening remarks as United States Poet Laureate, October 1991.

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• Good poetry seems so simple and natural a thing that when we meet it we wonder that all men are not always poets. Poetry is nothing but healthy speech.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Simple, Men, Poetry

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.2097, Delphi Classics

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• Poetry is the tunnel at the end of the light.

  J. Patrick Lewis

  Tunnels, Light, Poetry

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• Poetry is an orphan of silence. The words never quite equal the experience behind them.

  Charles Simic

  Poetry, Silence, Never Quit

  Charles Simic (1985). “The Uncertain Certainty: Interviews, Essays, and Notes on Poetry”

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• Remember, we are mortal, but poetry is not.

  Patti Smith

  Remember, Mortals

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• Above all I am not concerned with Poetry. My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity.

  Wilfred Owen

  War, Pity, Concerned

  Poems (1963 ed.) preface

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• An age which is incapable of poetry is incapable of any kind of literature except the cleverness of a decadence.

  Raymond Chandler

  Age, Literature, Kind

  Raymond Chandler, Dorothy Gardiner, Kathrine Sorley Walker (1977). “Raymond Chandler Speaking”, p.75, Univ of California Press

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• Poetry is a natural energy resource of our country. It has no energy crisis, possessing a potential that will last as long as the country. Its power is equal to that of any country in the world.

  Richard Eberhart

  Country, Long, Energy

  Richard Eberhart (1979). “Of Poetry and Poets”, Urbana : University of Illinois Press

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• Poetry is an awareness of the world, a particular way of relating to reality.

  Andrei Tarkovsky

  Reality, World, Way

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• Literature is a state of culture, poetry is a state of grace, before and after culture.

  Juan Ramon Jimenez

  Grace, Culture, Literature

  Selected Writings: "Poetry and Literature", 1941.

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• Poetry is ultimately mythology, the telling of stories of the soul. The old myths, the old gods, the old heroes have never died. They are only sleeping at the bottom of our minds, waiting for our call. We have need of them, for in their sum they epitomize the wisdom and experience of the race.

  Stanley Kunitz

  Hero, Sleep, Race

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• The fear of poetry is an indication that we are cut off from our own reality.

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Cutting, Reality, Indication

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• Mathematics is the art of giving the same name to different things.
  [As opposed to the quotation: Poetry is the art of giving different names to the same thing].

  Henri Poincare

  Art, Math, Names

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• The urge to write poetry is like having an itch. When the itch becomes annoying enough, you scratch it.

  Robert Penn Warren

  Writing, Scratches, Annoying

  1969 In the New York Times, 16 Dec.

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• Poetry is the fiery index to the genius of the age.

  Babette Deutsch

  Age, Genius, Fiery

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• One of the qualities essential to being good at reading poetry is also one of the qualities essential to being good at life: a capacity for surprise. It’s easy to become so mired in our likes or dislikes that we can no longer recall that person who once responded to poems—and to people—without any preconceived notions of what we wanted them to be.

  Christian Wiman

  Reading, People, Quality

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• Poetry is a good medium for revolutionary hope.

  Susan Griffin

  Revolutionary, Mediums

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• Poetry is priceless.... a way of keeping yourself feeling rich and civilized even when you're quite poor.

  Marie Ponsot

  Feelings, Way, Priceless

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