Great Poet Quotes - Page 5

• Sappho is a great poet because she is a lesbian, which gives her erotic access to the Muse. Sappho and the homosexual-tending Emily Dickinson stand alone above women poets, because poetry's mystical energies are ruled by a hierach requiring the sexual subordination of her petitioners. Women have achieved more as novelists than as poets because the social novel operates outside the ancient marriage of myth and eroticism.

  Camille Paglia

  Giving, Erotic, Energy

  "Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinso". Book by Camille Paglia, 1990.

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• I tried to explain to her the significance of the great poet, but without much success, The Waste Land not figuring very largely in Mam's scheme of things. "The thing is," I said finally, "he won the Nobel Prize." "Well," she said, with that unerring grasp of inessentials which is the prerogative of mothers, "I'm not surprised. It was a beautiful overcoat."

  Alan Bennett

  Beautiful, Mother, Land

  "Writing Home". Book by Alan Bennett, 1994.

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• Some great poet or philosopher once said that " he who goes to nature for comfort must go to her empty handed " , and I think he was right.

  Flora Thompson

  Thinking, Comfort, Philosopher

  Flora Thompson (2008). “The Peverel papers: nature notes written in Liphoo, Hampshire, 1921-1927”

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• The most beautiful conception of immortality of which I know, and certainly one that by contrast shows the utter vulgarity of Christian ideas, is set forth in Pindar's second Olympian: after three or six lives in which a man has lived with strict justice and perfect integrity, he passes beyond the tower of Cronus to the fair realm that cannot be reached by land or sea, where gentle breezes from a placid ocean blow forever on the fields of asphodel. For a description, see Pindar. If the beauty of great poetry can commend a religion, here you have it.

  Revilo P. Oliver

  Beautiful, Christian, Integrity

  "Afterthoughts on Afterlife". "Instauration" Magazine, August 1980.

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• 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

  Pain, Ice, Poetry

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• I'm a boxing junkie, a serial-killer junkie, and a classical guitar junkie. All of these guys are great, poetic references.

  Mark Kozelek

  Guitar, Boxing, Guy

  Interview with Laura Snapes, pitchfork.com. May 23, 2012.

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• No more than a famous master can be replaced and another take over the completion of the half-finished painting he has left behind can the great poet and thinker, the great statesman and the great soldier, be replaced. For their activity lies always in the province of art. It is not mechanically trained but inborn by God's grace.

  Adolf Hitler

  Art, Lying, Grace

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• One of my favorite artists is Tom Waits, whom most people think of as a wonderful singer-songwriter and a great poet. I certainly think of him that way, but I also know him as a terrific actor. You know, that persona that he puts on when he's doing his music comes from being an actor, figuring out a persona.

  Jeff Bridges

  Thinking, Artist, People

  "Jeff Bridges Abides". Interview with Tim Mcdonnell, www.motherjones.com. November, 2011.

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• It's difficult not to color our perception of author's product with his personality. There are so many examples of this. What do we think of Ezra Pound - clearly a great poet and clearly kind of an asshole? You can say the same thing about Louis-Ferdinand Céline, who clearly was a Nazi sympathizer, and yet one of the great writers of the 20th century. It is tough, but there are enough examples around where we have to somehow find a way of separating the work from the artist and seeing what there is to see in the work, while also condemning the thoughts we see in the man.

  Salman Rushdie

  Artist, Men, Thinking

  Source: pen.org

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• I've noticed that there can be a visceral reaction to strong statements about poetry, as if anyone who has an opinion and expresses it is shutting people down. It's funny to see that expressed, and then to go back and read poetic statements by the great poets of the past: they are full of a passionate conviction! It is clearly possible to express strong feelings about poetry while also defending the absolute right of myriad approaches.

  Matthew Zapruder

  Strong, Past, People

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I don't even think any stimulants really help writing. You talk to most guys and they say, "Hey. I wrote this." And they're out of their head or they had a few beers or a bottle of whiskey. You wake up the next morning, it's usually pretty crap. But you know Dylan Thomas wrote some great poetry. Brendan Behan. You never know but ultimately I'd say you have to get up early in the morning and you're usually sober when you write your good stuff; it's hard work. So alcohol, keep it for chilling out, fun, and having a good time. Not for work.

  Gavin Friday

  Morning, Fun, Hard Work

  Source: bigthink.com

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• There's great poetry in the Old Testament and the New Testament. And I'm not interested in trying to prove whether this paragraph is as it was or as it should have been or should not be. My pursuit is to find the truth for me in those stories and make them apropos. The important thing is that people wrote them. These were inspirational stories, and you got to see them that way. If you don't, you'll get in trouble. So I'm not going to spend a lot of time trying to find out whether or not Mary was a virgin. What do I care about Mary being a virgin?

  Cecil Williams

  People, Trying, Important

  Source: www.psychologytoday.com

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• There's been no poet, no great poet in the history of poetry who hasn't also been a great reader of poetry. This is sometimes distressing to my students when I tell them this.

  Edward Hirsch

  Students, Sometimes, Poet

  "A Poet Is Born". Big Think Interview, bigthink.com. February 4, 2010.

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• Now, I do say, "It's possible. You might be the first. I'm not saying it's impossible, but the odds are very much against you." All great poets have been great readers and the way to learn your craft in poetry is by reading other poetry and by letting it guide you.

  Edward Hirsch

  Reading, Odds, Crafts

  Source: bigthink.com

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• If you look at the recent Nobel Prize winners, one couldn't say that the work didn't matter and the political commitment did. Who had ever heard of the Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz? He is not politically involved. Octavio Paz is a great poet, also not politically involved. The Nobel Prize is for literature, for the quality of work over the years.

  Nadine Gordimer

  Commitment, Years, Political

  Source: progressive.org

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• The poem that comes closest to saying what I think is the one in Human Wishes called "Rusia en 1931." This poem is about [Osip] Mandelstam, who was a great poet and an anti-Stalinist, and [Cesar] Vallejo, who was a great poet and a Stalinist.

  Robert Hass

  Thinking, Wish, Poet

  Interview with Sarah Pollock, www.motherjones.com. March/April, 1997.

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• I think it was W.H. Auden who said he was lucky that his first favorite poet was Thomas Hardy, who was a good but not a great poet, because if you are exposed to the greats too soon it can just squash you as a writer.

  David Duchovny

  Thinking, Squash, Lucky

  Source: www.bostonglobe.com

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• I think that poets can say, "What we want is for everybody on earth to wake up free from fear and with access to medicine and clean water and education." But I don't think poets have any special insight on how to get there. And the 20th century is a pretty good record of that because so many of the great poets were Stalinists: Vallejo, Neruda, Eluard, Aragon, etc. They wrote their odes to Lenin and Stalin. They glorified some of the most violent and grotesque dictatorships of the 20th century. And a lot of the ones who were not Stalinists were fascists or fascist sympathizers.

  Robert Hass

  Thinking, Medicine, Water

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• He who, in an enlightened and literary society, aspires to be a great poet, must first become a little child.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Children, Poetry, Littles

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• You can't be too influenced by a great poet. You simply have to live through it.

  Kenneth Koch

  Poet

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• But Racine's extraordinary powers as a writer become still more obvious when we consider that besides being a great poet he is also a great psychologist.

  Lytton Strachey

  Poetic, Psychologist, Obvious

  Lytton Strachey (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of Lytton Strachey (Illustrated)”, p.64, Delphi Classics

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• England still waits for the supreme moment of her literature--for the great poet who shall voice her, or, better still, for the thousand little poets whose voices shall pass into our common talk.

  E. M. Forster

  Voice, Poetry, Waiting

  E. M. Forster (2013). “Delphi Collected Works of E. M. Forster (Illustrated)”, p.733, Delphi Classics

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• genius is original, unique; and in whatever form it may develop itself is the greatest gift that can be given to man, the strongest known link between the material life we have and the spiritual life that we can only guess at. Every great poet, painter, or musician - every inventor or man of science, every fine actor or orator, comes to us as the exponent of something diviner than we know. We cannot understand it, but we feel it, and acknowledge it.

  Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

  Spiritual, Men, Unique

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• Rare almost as great poets, rarer, perhaps, than veritable saints and martyrs; are consummate men of business. A man, to be excellent in this way, requires a great knowledge of character, with that exquisite tact which feels unerringly the right moment when to act. A discreet rapidity must pervade all the movements of his thought and action. He must be singularly free from vanity, and is generally found to be an enthusiast who has the art to conceal his enthusiasm.

  Arthur Helps

  Art, Business, Character

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• It's a big thing to call yourself a poet. All I can say is that I have always written poems. I don't think I'm interested in any discussion about whether I'm a good poet, a bad poet or a great poet. But I am sure, I want to write great poems. I think every poet should want that.

  Clive James

  Writing, Thinking, Want

  "Clive James on turning his ‘last time on earth’ into a writing wellspring". Interview with Art Beat, www.pbs.org. December 3, 2013.

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