W. H. Auden Quotes About Poetry

Quotes about: Poetry

• A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.

  W. H. Auden

  Love, Passion, Language Words

  "Poets at Work" by W. H. Auden, (p. 170), 1948.

• A poet must never make a statement simply because it is sounds poetically exciting; he must also believe it to be true.

  W. H. Auden

  Believe, Writing, Poetry

• He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

  W. H. Auden

  Love, Death, Song

  "Funeral Blues" l. 9 (1936)

• It is a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art than he can by practicing it.

  W. H. Auden

  Art, Money, Writing

  Dyer's Hand (1963) foreword

• Earth, receive an honored guest; William Yeats is laid to rest. Let the Irish vessel lie Emptied of its poetry.

  W. H. Auden

  Art, Lying, Poetry

  "In Memory of W. B. Yeats" l. 42 (1940)

• Adjectives are the potbelly of poetry.

  W. H. Auden

  Poetry, Adjectives

• Rhymes, meters, stanza forms, etc., are like servants. If the master is fair enough to win their affection and firm enough to command their respect, the result is an orderly happy household. If he is too tyrannical, they give notice; if he lacks authority, they become slovenly, impertinent, drunk and dishonest.

  W. H. Auden

  Art, Winning, Drunk

• Poetry is the only art people haven't learned to consume like soup.

  W. H. Auden

  Art, People, Poetry

• The primary function of poetry, as of all the arts, is to make us more aware of ourselves and the world around us. I do not know if such increased awareness makes us more moral or more efficient. I hope not. I think it makes us more human, and I am quite certain it makes us more difficult to deceive.

  W. H. Auden

  Art, Thinking, Poetry

• With the farming of a verse
  Make a vineyard of the curse

  W. H. Auden

  Poetry, Vineyards, Farming

  W.H. Auden (2016). “Canción de cuna y otros poemas”, p.150, DEBOLS!LLO

• You will be a poet because you will always be humiliated.

  W. H. Auden

  Poetry, Poet, Humiliated

  Entry for April 11, 1979. "Stephen Spender, Journals 1939-1983". Book by Stephen Spender, 1985.

• What is a Professor of Poetry? How can poetry be professed?

  W. H. Auden

  Poetry, Professors, Poetry Is

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