POETRY QUOTES IX

quotations about poetry

No verse is free for the man who wants to do a good job.

T. S. ELIOT

The Music of Poetry

Tags: T. S. Eliot


Poets are almost always wrong about facts. That's because they are not really interested in facts: only in truth.

WILLIAM FAULKNER

"The Town"

Tags: William Faulkner


Rhyme is the rock on which thou art to wreck,
'Tis fatal to thy fame and to thy neck.

JOHN DRYDEN

Abaslom and Achitophel

Tags: John Dryden


The white light of truth, in traversing the many sided transparent soul of the poet, is refracted into iris-hued poetry.

HERBERT SPENCER

The Philosophy of Style

Tags: Herbert Spencer


You can tell it's a poem because it's swimming in a little gel pack of white space. That shows it's a poem.

NICHOLSON BAKER

The Anthologist

Tags: Nicholson Baker


A poet is wounded into speech, and he examines these wounds, meticulously, to discover how to heal them. The bad poet harangues at the pain and yowls at the weapons that lacerate him; the great poet explores the inflamed lips of ruined flesh with ice-caked fingers, glittering and precise; but ultimately his poem is the echoing, dual voice reporting the damages.

SAMUEL R. DELANY

The Fall of the Towers

Tags: Samuel R. Delany


Poetry is pretty much everywhere: bubbling in the broken coffee machine, creeping through the cold-calls, boasting in the empty bank balance. Poetry is disconcerting and at best dangerous, lurking in that deep-stomach lurch when you lean too close to the platform edge.

JADE CUTTLE

"A plate of poetry, please: Is poetry more important than politics?", Varsity Online, May 3, 2016


We do not reject the song that makes the blood dance faster through our veins, or the lyric that thrills us with its sensuous beauty, or the romantic tale that fills up some painful or languorous hour, or the ode that sometimes, lapping our spirits in forgetfulness or summer dreams, brings us welcome reprieve from life's "sore spell of toil." But our unstinted and undying gratitude we reserve for the poet who, finding us disconsolate, comforts us; who, finding us disheartened and ready to yield, sounds the note of advance for us; who, finding us recreant to our trust and disloyal to our aspirations, uncovers for us once more the ideal that has been temporarily obscured. It is he who stays our feet amid the whirling waters of temptation; who sets the stars of faith and love and hope in our benighted sky, and who whispers to us in our lonely and nerveless moments of despair the heartening message of God and immortality.

FRANK CUMMINS LOCKWOOD

Robert Browning

Tags: Frank Cummins Lockwood


If the poet would avoid pepsis in his patients, his scalpel must be as clean as the surgeon's.

AUSTIN O'MALLEY

Keystones of Thought

Tags: Austin O'Malley


Poetry has the power to turn words into darts that shoot under your skin.

PENNY ASHTON

"Poetry Idol's organiser is shocked and saddened to learn that slam poetry is 'dumb-ass and not good'", The Spinoff, April 28, 2016


The poet is the man that sings,
That plays upon the harp's wild strings,
That reads the tale of starry skies,
That soars aloft on seraph's wings.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN FIELD

"Poetry"

Tags: Benjamin Franklin Field


There is a widespread notion in the public mind that poetic inspiration has something mysterious and translunar about it, something which altogether escapes human analysis, which it would be almost sacrilege for analysis to touch. The Romans spoke of the poet's divine afflatus, the Elizabethans of his fine frenzy. And even in our own day critics, and poets themselves, are not lacking who take the affair quite as seriously. Our critics and poets are themselves largely responsible for this -- they are a sentimental lot, even when most discerning, and cannot help indulging, on the one hand, in a reverential attitude toward the art, and, on the other, in a reverential attitude toward themselves.

CONRAD AIKEN

Scepticisms: Notes on Contemporary Poetry

Tags: Conrad Aiken


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

HONORE DE BALZAC

Louis Lambert

Tags: Honore de Balzac


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

We

Tags: Yevgeny Zamyatin


I despise slam poetry. Not as much as I despise ukulele orchestras, but it's up there. You can make all the connections you like to the spoken word performance poetry of the Beats and hippies of the 1950s and '60s (Allen Ginsberg performing Howl in 1959), Harlem roasts of the '20s and '30s, and Flyting (the bardic insult competitions the Anglo-Nordic peoples filled in the long winters with between the fifth and sixteenth centuries) and good luck to you, but I hate it.

ANDREW PAUL WOOD

"Slam poetry is despicable and dumb-ass and not good", The Spinoff, April 27, 2016


No one ever expects poetry to sell.

ALAN LIGHTMAN

interview, Identity Theory, November 16, 2000

Tags: Alan Lightman


Prose on certain occasions can bear a great deal of poetry: on the other hand, poetry sinks and swoons under a moderate weight of prose ; and neither fan nor burned feather can bring her to herself again.

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR

Imaginary Conversations

Tags: Walter Savage Landor


There's no preparation for poetry. Four years of grave digging with a nice volume of poetry or a book of philosophy in one's pocket would serve as well as any university.

CHARLES SIMIC

The Paris Review, spring 2005

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All poets pretend to write for immortality, but the whole tribe have no objection to present pay, and present praise.

CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Lacon

Tags: Charles Caleb Colton


Beauty is the sole legitimate province of the poem.

EDGAR ALLAN POE

"The Philosophy of Composition"

Tags: Edgar Allan Poe