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"Poetry was invented as an mnemonic device to enable people to remember their prayers."
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"That men, who might have tower'd in the vanOf all the congregated world, to fanAnd winnow from the coming step of timeAll chaff of custom, wipe away all slimeLeft by men-slugs and human serpentry,Have been content to let occasion die,Whilst they did sleep in love's Elysium."
"My love is a winter's mistgently dissolvingthrough the windowat the nape of your neck."
"Poems can getsleepless tooand becomethe loneliest thingin the universe."
"Whatever you get out of poetry - take it. take it. take it. Words are better off felt than understood."
"I do think that poetry is important though, if you don't strive at it, if you don't fill it full of stars and falseness."
"A poem in the heart is worthmore than a million dollarsin the bank account."
"But here there is no light, Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy waysI cannot see what flowers are at my feet, Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs, But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet..Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine, The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves."
"May this poetrybe the homeyou will someday come back to."
"The American bards shall be marked for generosity and affection and for encouraging competitors. The great poets are also to be known by the absence in them of tricks and by the justification of perfect personal candor. How beautiful is candor! All faults may be forgiven of him who has perfect candor."
Explore more quotes by Peter Davison
"The relation between a poet and audience is really insignificant. What matters is the poet is hearing something that he is broadcasting. And whether there is anybody with a receiver isn't the reason he does it. He hopes there is somebody receiving it."
"The more poetry you have in the head, the more poetry you will understand because you will be getting to the roots of what it is that makes people write poetry at all."
"The trouble with the performance poets is that they don't seem to have read anything. So there is not a real sense of the poetic tradition in their work."
"In order to understand what they need to understand, in order to write what they write, they have to be free. And yet, they aren't ever free. They are not free because they are not free of the constrictions their art puts on them."
"They need to learn poetry. They don't need to learn about poetry. They don't need to be told how to interpret poetry. They don't need to be told how to understand poetry. They need to learn it."
"I think poetry has lost an awful lot of its muscle because nobody knows any. Nobody has to memorize poetry."
"Dealing with poetry is a daunting task, simply because the reason one does it as an editor at all is because one is constantly coming to terms with one's own understanding of how to understand the world."
"I just think that some version of the past in our culture is going to rise up and become dominant."
"Every so often I find some poems that are too good for the readers of The Atlantic because they are a little too involved with the nature of poetry, as such."
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