Poetry Quotes - Page 5

• A poem is never finished, only abandoned.

  Paul Valery

  Inspirational, Life, Witty

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• Men yearn for poetry though they may not confess it; they desire that joy shall be graceful and sorrow august and infinity have a form.

  E. M. Forster

  Men, August, Joy

  E. M. Forster (2010). “A Passage to India”, p.211, RosettaBooks

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• The works of great poets have never been read by mankind, for only great poets can read them.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Poet, Mankind, Great Poet

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• The poet, as everyone knows, must strike his individual note sometime between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five. He may hold it a long time, or a short time, but it is then that he must strike it or never. School and college have been conducted with the almost express purpose of keeping him busy with something else till the danger of his ever creating anything is past.

  Robert Frost

  School, Past, College

  Robert Frost, Mark Richardson (2007). “The Collected Prose of Robert Frost”, p.96, Harvard University Press

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• To me the poets are closer than I am to the idea of voice, to a sort of primeval song that we all participate in.

  Francesco Clemente

  Song, Ideas, Voice

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• There were poets before Homer.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Poet

  Marcus Tullius Cicero (1939). “Brutus, with an English translation”, Loeb Classical Library

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• For me, poetry is an evasion of the real job of writing prose.

  Sylvia Plath

  Jobs, Real, Writing

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• Poetry and consumption are the most flattering of diseases.

  William Shenstone

  Disease, Flattering, Consumption

  William Shenstone (1868). “The Poetical Works of William Shenstone: With Life, Critical Dissertation and Explanatory Notes”, p.18

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• The word "Verse" is used here as the term most convenient for expressing, and without pedantry, all that is involved in the consideration of rhythm, rhyme, meter, and versification... the subject is exceedingly simple; one tenth of it, possibly may be called ethical; nine tenths, however, appertains to the mathematics.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Simple, May, Nine

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• Poetry comes fine-spun from a mind at peace.

  Ovid

  Mind, Fine, Spun

  Ovid (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ovid (Illustrated)”, p.1299, Delphi Classics

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• There's poetry in the world. Poetry doesn't belong just to the poets. You know, you can look at the most premeditated, cold blooded movie and find poetry in it.

  Francesco Clemente

  Looks, World, Cold

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• Just now I've taen the fit o' rhyme / My barmie noddle's working prime.

  Robert Burns

  Fit, Prime, Rhyme

  'To J. S[mith]' (1786) st. 4

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• There is a great amount of poetry in unconscious fastidiousness.

  Marianne Moore

  Unconscious, Amount

  Marianne Moore (1994). “Complete Poems”, p.38, Penguin

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• In the world of poetry there are would-be poets, workshop poets, promising poets, lovesick poets, university poets, and a few real poets.

  James Broughton

  Real, Would Be, World

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• I take as metaphysical poetry that in which what is ordinarily apprehensible only by thought is brought within the grasp of feeling, or that in which what is ordinarily only felt is transformed into thought without ceasing to be feeling.

  T. S. Eliot

  Art, Feelings, Metaphysical

  T. S. Eliot (2014). “The Varieties of Metaphysical Poetry”, p.220, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred.

  Alfred Lord Tennyson

  Death, War, Valleys

  "The Charge of the Light Brigade" l. 1 (1854)

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• Poetry is perfect verbs hunting for elusive nouns.

  J. Patrick Lewis

  Writing, Hunting, Perfect

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• Nine-tenths of English poetic literature is the result either of vulgar careerism or of a poet trying to keep his hand in. Most poets are dead by their late twenties.

  Robert Graves

  Hands, Trying, Nine

  "Ten key things about... poetry" by Dorota Nosowicz, www.theguardian.com. October 1, 2000.

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• Poetry, even when apparently most fantastic, is always a revolt against artifice, a revolt, in a sense, against actuality. It speaks of what seems fantastic and unreal to those who have lost the simple intuitions which are the test of reality; and, as it is often found at war with its age, so it makes no account of history, which is fabled by the daughters of memory.

  James Joyce

  Daughter, Memories, War

  James Joyce (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of James Joyce (Illustrated)”, p.2218, Delphi Classics

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• Poetry is the revelation of a feeling that the poet believes to be interior and personal but which the reader recognizes as his own.

  Salvatore Quasimodo

  Inspirational, Believe, Feelings

  Speech in New York, 13 May 1960, in New York Times 14 May 1960, p. 47

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• He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realize

  Oscar Wilde

  Life, Writing, Realizing

  Oscar Wilde (2015). “The Picture of Dorian Gray (Diversion Classics)”, p.64, Diversion Books

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• Poetry is the art of creating imaginary gardens with real toads.

  Marianne Moore

  Inspirational, Life, Art

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• The job of the poet is to render the world-to see it and report it without loss, without perversion. No poet ever talks about feelings. Only sentimental people do.

  Mark Van Doren

  Life, Jobs, Loss

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• Poetry is not a civilizer, rather the reverse, for great poetry appeals to the most primitive instincts.

  Robinson Jeffers

  Instinct, Appeals, Primitive

  Robinson Jeffers, Tim Hunt (1988). “The Collected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers: Poetry 1903-1920, prose, and unpublished writings”, p.425, Stanford University Press

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• She had blue skin, And so did he. He kept it hid And so did she. They searched for blue Their whole life through, Then passed right by- And never knew.

  Shel Silverstein

  Blue, Skins, Looking For Love

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