Poetry Quotes - Page 20

• The materials of true poetry are always humble, absolutely idiosyncratic, the autobiographical tatters that, in gifted hands, are made into the memoir that fits us all.

  Patricia Hampl

  Humble, Hands, Fit

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• Poetry is the apotheosis of sentiment.

  Madame de Stael

  Apotheosis, Poetry Is, Sentiments

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• Though we do not have many poets, we certainly have more than we deserve, for we deserve none at all. It is ourselves that we are hurting by our stupidity and ignorance of poetry.

  Elizabeth Janeway

  Hurt, Ignorance, Stupidity

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• I tell poets that when a line just floats into your head, don't pay attention 'cause it probably has floated into somebody else's head.

  Gwendolyn Brooks

  Lines, Pay, Causes

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• religion is poetry, - poetry is religion.

  Marie Corelli

  Poetry Is

  Marie Corelli (2004). “Wormwood: A Drama of Paris”, p.104, Broadview Press

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• I always say that one's poetry is a solace to oneself and a nuisance to one's friends.

  Hortense Calisher

  Nuisance, Solace, Oneself

  Hortense Calisher (2013). “The Collected Stories of Hortense Calisher”, p.629, Open Road Media

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• Poetry is the connecting link between body and mind.

  Camille Paglia

  Mind, Links, Body

  Camille Paglia (2018). “Free Women, Free Men: Sex, Gender, Feminism”, p.46, Canongate Books

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• What shall I say about poetry? What shall I say about those clouds, or about the sky? Look; look at them; look at it! And nothing more. Don't you understand anything about poetry? Leave that to the critics and the professors. For neither you, nor I, nor any poet knows what poetry is.

  Federico Garcia Lorca

  Clouds, Sky, Looks

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• Outrage and possibility are in all the poems we know.

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Possibility, Outrage, Knows

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• The universe of poetry is the universe of emotional truth. Our material is in the way we feel and the way we remember.

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Emotional, Way, Remember

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• Poetry is a dumb Buddha who thinks a donkey is as important as a diamond.

  Natalie Goldberg

  Thinking, Dumb, Important

  Natalie Goldberg (1990). “Wild Mind: Living the Writer's Life”, Bantam

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• Poems are taught as though the poet has put a secret key in his words and it is the reader's job to find it. Poems are not mystery novels.

  Natalie Goldberg

  Jobs, Keys, Secret

  Natalie Goldberg (2016). “Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within”, p.38, Shambhala Publications

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• The poem is always the last resort. In it the poet makes a world in little, and finds peace, even though, under complete focused emotion, the evocation be far more bitter than reality, or far more lovely.

  Louise Bogan

  Reality, Lovely, World

  Louise Bogan, Ruth Limmer (1981). “Journey around my room: the autobiography of Louise Bogan : a mosaic”, Viking Pr

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• But poetry is not to be lived, except for the few to whom it is more important than self-preservation.

  Rosamond Lehmann

  Self, Important, Preservation

  Rosamond Lehmann (1975). “The ballad and the source”, Harvest Books

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• The poets have familiarized more people with history than have the historians.

  Barbara Tuchman

  People, History, Historian

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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

  Together, Pulpit, Preacher

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

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• my poems covered the bare places in my childhood like the fine, new skin under a scab that hasn't yet fallen off completely.

  Tove Ditlevsen

  Childhood, Skins, Scabs

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• As a direct line to human feeling, empathic experience, genuine language and detail, poetry is everything that headline news is not. It takes us inside situations, helps us imagine life from more than one perspective, honors imagery and metaphor - those great tools of thought - and deepens our confidence in a meaningful world.

  Naomi Shihab Nye

  Meaningful, Perspective, Feelings

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• The act of making poetry is an act of hope.

  Natasha Trethewey

  Poetry Is

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• If there is anything I love most, in the poems I love, it is the audible braiding of that bravery, that essential empty-handedness, and that willingness to be taken by surprise, all in one voice.

  Jorie Graham

  Taken, Voice, Bravery

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• True poetry, like the religious prompting itself, springs from the emotional side of a man's complex nature, and is ever in harmony with his highest intuitions and aspirations.

  Epes Sargent

  Religious, Spring, Men

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• My ear is not working, my poetry ear. I can't write a line that doesn't sound like pots and pans falling out of the cupboard.

  Jane Kenyon

  Fall, Writing, Ears

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• I believe that poets have to be inside their poems somewhere, or the poem won't work.

  Joy Harjo

  Believe, I Believe, Poet

  Joy Harjo, Laura Coltelli (1996). “The spiral of memory: interviews”, Univ of Michigan Pr

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• I guess the quality that makes one write poetry keeps one from selling it.

  Louise Closser Hale

  Writing, Quality, Selling

  Louise Closser Hale (1912). “Her Soul and Her Body”

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• My publishers will make any kind of a beautiful book I design and send in to them, but ... For poetry they have less use than a rooster would have for skates.

  Gene Stratton-Porter

  Beautiful, Book, Design

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