Poetry Quotes - Page 32

• The lamp you lighted in the olden time Will show you my heart's-blood beating through the rhyme: A poet's journal, writ in fire and tears... Then slow deliverance, with the gaps of years.

  Bayard Taylor

  Heart, Fire, Blood

  Bayard Taylor (1865). “The Poems of Bayard Taylor”, p.13, Boston : Ticknor and Fields

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• There is no peace to be taken
  With poets who are young,
  For they worry about the wars to be fought
  and the songs that must be sung.

  Joyce Kilmer

  Song, War, Taken

  Joyce Kilmer (1968). “Joyce Kilmer: Memoir and poems”

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• Poetry is what makes my toenails twinkle.

  Dylan Thomas

  Toenails, Poetry Is

  Dylan Thomas, Daniel Jones (2003). “The Poems of Dylan Thomas”, p.22, New Directions Publishing

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• No really sensible person ever remembers enough poetry to recite it.

  E. W. Howe

  Remember, Enough, Sensible

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• Some people pretend they never were in love and never wrote poetry; two weaknesses which they dare not own -- one of the heart, the other of the mind.

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Heart, Two, People

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• All poetry like every work of art proceeds from a swift vision of things.

  Honore de Balzac

  Art, Vision, Works Of Art

  Honore De Balzac (2011). “Louis Lambert”, p.36, The Floating Press

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• I think it was rather an advantage not having any living poets in England or America in whom one took any particular interest. I don't know what it would be like but I think it would be a rather troublesome distraction to have such a lot of dominating presences, as you call them, about. Fortunately we weren't bothered by each other.

  T. S. Eliot

  Thinking, America, Would Be

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• True poetry is not of earth, 'T is more of Heaven by its birth.

  William Faulkner

  Heaven, Earth, Birth

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• A poet is the most unpoetical of anything in existence; because he has no identity he is continually informing and filling some other body.

  John Keats

  Identity, Literature, Body

  John Keats (1994). “The Works of John Keats: With an Introduction and Bibliography”, p.9, Wordsworth Editions

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• A Poem should be palpable and mute As a globed fruit.

  Archibald MacLeish

  Fruit, Should, Mute

  'Ars Poetica' (1926)

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• It is at once by way of poetry and through poetry, as with music, that the soul glimpses splendors from beyond the tomb; and when an exquisite poem brings one's eyes to the point of tears, those tears are not evidence of an excess of joy, they are witness far more to an exacerbated melancholy, a disposition of the nerves, a nature exiled among imperfect things, which would like to possess, without delay, a paradise revealed on this very same earth.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Eye, Imperfect Things, Joy

  "L'art romantique". Book by Charles Baudelaire, 1869.

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• Mediocrity in poets has never been tolerated by either men, or gods, or booksellers.

  Horace

  Men, Mediocrity, Booksellers

  "Ars Poetica". Poem by Horace, Lines 372 - 373, c. 18 BC.

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• He that would earn the Poet's sacred name, Must write for future as for present ages.

  Christopher Pearse Cranch

  Writing, Names, Age

  Christopher Pearse Cranch (1844). “Poems”, p.38

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• Poetry is a river; many voices travel in it; poem after poem moves along in the exciting crests and falls of the river waves. None is timeless; each arrives in an historical context; almost everything, in the end, passes. But the desire to make a poem, and the world's willingness to receive it--indeed the world's need of it--these never pass.

  Mary Oliver

  Moving, Fall, Voice

  Mary Oliver (1994). “A Poetry Handbook”, p.9, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Poetry is a serious business; literature is the apparatus through which the world tries to keep intact its important ideas and feelings.

  Mary Oliver

  Ideas, Feelings, Important

  Mary Oliver (1994). “A Poetry Handbook”, p.108, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Poetry is one of the ancient arts, and it began, as did all the fine arts, within the original wilderness of the earth. Also, it began through the process of seeing, and feeling, and hearing, and smelling, and touching, and then remembering--I mean remembering in words--what these perceptual experiences were like, while trying to describe the endless invisible fears and desires of our inner lives.

  Mary Oliver

  Art, Mean, Touching

  Mary Oliver (1994). “A Poetry Handbook”, p.106, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Every genuine poet is necessarily a Columbus. America existed for centuries before Columbus but it was only Columbus who was able to track it down.

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  America, Track, Able

  Yevgeny Zamyatin (2010). “We: Introduction by Will Self”, p.59, Random House

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• A poet must have died as a man before he is worth anything as a poet.

  Christian Morgenstern

  Men, Poet, Died

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• Sculpture and painting are moments of life; poetry is life itself.

  Walter Savage Landor

  Sculpture, Painting, Moments

  Walter Savage Landor (1836). “Pericles and Aspasia”, p.149

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• Though my verse but roam the air And murmur in the trees, You may discern a purpose there, As in music of the bees.

  Alfred Austin

  Air, Tree, Bees

  Alfred Austin (1885). “At the Gate of the Convent: And Other Poems”

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• Tis true among fields and woods I sing, Aloof from cities--that my poor strains Were born, like the simple flowers you bring, In English meadows and English lanes.

  Alfred Austin

  Flower, Simple, Cities

  Alfred Austin (1896). “Days of the Year: A Poetic Calendar from the Works of A. Austin”

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• My poetry had the same functional origin and the same formal configuration as teenage acne.

  Umberto Eco

  Teenage, Acne, Formal

  "Novelist Umberto Eco dies at 84; wrote 'Name of the Rose' and 'Foucault's Pendulum'" by Carolyn Kellogg and Jill Leovy, www.latimes.com. February 19, 2016.

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• The tragic element in poetry is like Saturn in alchemy, — the Malevolent, the Destroyer of Nature ; but without it no true Aurum Potabile, or Elixir of Life, can be made.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Elements, Saturn, Made

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1866). “Kavanagh. Driftwood”, p.365

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• A satirical poet is the check of the laymen on bad priests.

  John Dryden

  Checks, Priests, Satirical

  John Dryden (2016). “The Works of John Dryden, Vol.2: Top English Literature”, p.292, VM eBooks

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• Men of real talents in Arms have commonly approved themselves patrons of the liberal arts and friends to the poets, of their own as well as former times. In some instances by acting reciprocally, heroes have made poets, and poets heroes.

  George Washington

  Art, Real, Hero

  George Washington, Fred Anderson, Philander D. Chase (2004). “George Washington Remembers: Reflections on the French and Indian War”, p.92, Rowman & Littlefield

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