"When I was asked to be Writer in Residence at Edinburgh I thought, you can't teach poetry. This is ridiculous."

Poetry, Thought, Writer

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"When I was asked to be Writer in Residence at Edinburgh I thought, you can't teach poetry. This is ridiculous."

Exlpore more Poetry quotes

"It is strange how a scrap of poetry works in the mind and makes the legs move in time to it along the road."

Virginia Woolf, British Author

Poetry, Movement, Memory, Time

"Poetry is a sword of lightning, ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it."

Percy Bysshe Shelley, English Poet

Poetry,

"I don't think of poetry as a 'rational' activity but as an aural one. My poems usually begin with words or phrases which appeal more because of their sound than their meaning, and the movement and phrasing of a poem are very important to me."

Margaret Atwood, Canadian Novelist

Poetry, Sound, Words, Movement

"Women do not have as great a need for poetry because their own essence is poetry."

Karl Schlegel, German Philosopher

Poetry, Women

"One could do worse than be a swinger of birches."

Robert Frost, American Poet

Poetry, Nature, Metaphor, Life

"Now begins to rise in me the familiar rhythm; words that have lain dormant now lift, now toss their crests, and fall and rise, and falls again. I am a poet, yes. Surely I am a great poet."

Virginia Woolf, British Author

Poetry, Creativity, Identity, Words

"There is no Frigate like a book to take us lands away nor any coursers like a page of prancing Poetry."

Emily Dickinson, American Poet

Poetry,

"Will the veiled sister pray for Those who walk in darkness, who chose thee and oppose thee, Those who are torn on the horn between season and season, time and time, between Hour and hour, word and word, power and power, those who wait In darkness? Will the veiled sister pray For children at the gate Who will not go away and cannot pray: Pray for those who chose and oppose."

T. S. Eliot, American Poet

Poetry, Prayer, Darkness, Choice, Hope

"The words of the true poems give you more than poems, they give you to form for yourself poems, religions, politics, war, peace, behavior, histories, essays, daily life, & everything else, they balance the ranks, colors, races, creeds, and the sexes, they do not seek beauty, they are sought, forever touching them or close upon them follows beauty, longing, fain, love-sick. They prepare for death, yet they are not the finish, but rather the outset, they bring none of his or her terminus or to be content & full, whom they take they take into space to behold the birth of the stars, to learn one of the meanings, to launch off with absolute faith, to sweep through the ceaseless rings & never be quiet again."

Walt Whitman, American Poet

Poetry, Inspirational, Art, Life

"Death, like a host, comes smiling to the door;Smiling, he greets us, on that tranquil shoreWhere neither piping bird nor peeping dawnDisturbs the eternal sleep,But in the stillness far withdrawnOur dreamless rest for evermore we keep."

Robert Louis Stevenson, Scottish Writer

Poetry, Death, Peace, Rest, Eternity

Explore more quotes by Norman MacCaig

"And if they haven't got poetry in them, there's nothing you can do that will produce it."

Poetry

"And the second question, can poetry be taught? I didn't think so."

Poetry

"I don't care whether a book is a first edition or not. I'm not a bibliophile in that word's natural sense."

Care

"But you'd have a job to find many of my poems which would seem to be very influenced by a particular person."

Job

"If I wrote a play with four characters every single one of them would talk like me regardless of age or sex."

Age

"When I was a teacher, teachers would come into my classroom and admire my desk on which lay nothing whatever, whereas theirs were heaped with papers and books."

Books

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Exlpore more Poetry quotes

"It is strange how a scrap of poetry works in the mind and makes the legs move in time to it along the road."

"Poetry is a sword of lightning, ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it."

"I don't think of poetry as a 'rational' activity but as an aural one. My poems usually begin with words or phrases which appeal more because of their sound than their meaning, and the movement and phrasing of a poem are very important to me."

"Women do not have as great a need for poetry because their own essence is poetry."

"One could do worse than be a swinger of birches."

"Now begins to rise in me the familiar rhythm; words that have lain dormant now lift, now toss their crests, and fall and rise, and falls again. I am a poet, yes. Surely I am a great poet."

"There is no Frigate like a book to take us lands away nor any coursers like a page of prancing Poetry."

"Death, like a host, comes smiling to the door;Smiling, he greets us, on that tranquil shoreWhere neither piping bird nor peeping dawnDisturbs the eternal sleep,But in the stillness far withdrawnOur dreamless rest for evermore we keep."

Explore more quotes by Norman MacCaig

"Well, I'm a light traveller. I chuck things away."

"I was very interested in American poetry for many years. Much less now."

"I don't think of myself all the time."

"I never think about poetry except when I'm writing it. I mean my poetry."

"And if they haven't got poetry in them, there's nothing you can do that will produce it."

"And the second question, can poetry be taught? I didn't think so."

"I don't care whether a book is a first edition or not. I'm not a bibliophile in that word's natural sense."

"But you'd have a job to find many of my poems which would seem to be very influenced by a particular person."

"If I wrote a play with four characters every single one of them would talk like me regardless of age or sex."

"When I was a teacher, teachers would come into my classroom and admire my desk on which lay nothing whatever, whereas theirs were heaped with papers and books."