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Poetry Quotes
"Still, language is resilient, and poetry when it is pressured simply goes underground."
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"The poet exposes himself to the risk. All that has been said about poetry, all that he has learned about poetry, is only a partial assurance."
35
"Nobody ever told me what to read, or ever put poetry in my way."
35
"If you go into a bar in most places in America and even say the word poetry, you'll probably get beaten up. But poetry is a really strong, beautiful form to me, and a lot of innovation in language comes from poetry."
35
"I guess I wanted to leave America for awhile. It wasn't that I wanted to become an expatriate, or just never come back, I needed some breathing room. I'd already been translating French poetry, I'd been to Paris once before and liked it very much, and so I just went."
34
"Poetry is a mixture of common sense, which not all have, with an uncommon sense, which very few have."
34
"I think when kids just see well-crafted poetry, it's just obtuse to them. It's hard to relate to."
34
"Because people are very interested in my poetry, in what I say."
34
"I've done a number of readings at poetry lounges in Vancouver and Los Angeles. I've compiled a book of poetry that's completed, and two others I'm working on."
34
"I hardly remember how I started to write poetry. It's hard to imagine what I thought poetry could do."
34
"Of course a poem is a two-way street. No poem is any good if it doesn't suggest to the reader things from his own mind and recollection that he will read into it, and will add to what the poet has suggested. But I do think poetry readings are very important."
34
"Manifesting that order of poetry where we can at last grow up to that which we stored up as we grew."
34
"Listen, real poetry doesn't say anything; it just ticks off the possibilities. Opens all doors. You can walk through anyone that suits you."
34
"Ah! The anguish, the vile rage, the despairOf not being able to expressWith a shout, an extreme and bitter shout,The bleeding of my heart."
34
"It is the timber of poetry that wears most surely, and there is no timber that has not strong roots among the clay and worms."
34
"There's one of my new poems actually - is a good example of where my poetry has ended up. My earlier river poetry was more like a cross between Shelley and Dylan Thomas."
34
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
34
"I don't think you get to good writing unless you expose yourself and your feelings. Deep songs don't come from the surface; they come from the deep down. The poetry and the songs that you are suppose to write, I believe are in your heart."
34
"As civilization advances, poetry almost necessarily declines."
34
"But mostly not for nothing never quite for nothing even stillest night when air too still for even the lightest leaf to sound no not to sound to carry too still for even the lightest leaf to carry the brief way here and not die the sound not die on the brief way the wave not die away."
34
"Well, probably I was fed up with concrete poetry. There was a lot of bad concrete poetry and besides, it was confused with visual poetry which was completely different."
34
"Half of what I say is meaningless, but I say it so that the other half may reach you."
33
"Poetry leads us to the unstructured sources of our beings, to the unknown, and returns us to our rational, structured selves refreshed."
33
"Poetry is an art, and chief of the fine art; the easiest to dabble in, the hardest in which to reach true excellence."
33
"Poetry, even when apparently most fantastic, is always a revolt against artifice, a revolt, in a sense, against actuality."
33
"It should here be added that poetry habitually takes the form of verse."
33
"I've got a book of poetry by the bed, one of these big collections that goes back to the Greeks and Romans."
33
"Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;Conspiring with him how to load and blessWith fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shellsWith a sweet kernel; to set budding more,And still more, later flowers for the bees,Until they think warm days will never cease,For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells."
33
"The poet is a faker / Who's so good at his act / He even fakes the pain / Of pain he feels in fact."
33
"I do not go in search of poetry. I wait for poetry to visit me."
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"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."
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