Poet Quotes - Page 29

• Prose and poetry are as different as food and drink.

  Franz Grillparzer

  Food, Prose And Poetry, Different

  4 Copy quote

• The manifestation of poetry in external life is formal perfection. True sentiment grows within, and art must represent internal phenomena externally.

  Franz Grillparzer

  Life, Art, Perfection

  4 Copy quote

• Why must ancients, and provided the same talent, be better than modern authors?
  Free to exploit the vast realm of the simpleand the natural, they did not have to be artificial in order to be original (which every artist aspires to be).

  Franz Grillparzer

  Art, Order, Poetry

  4 Copy quote

• A wise man can and should stand above his times, not so the poet, but he should be their apex.

  Franz Grillparzer

  Wise, Wisdom, Men

  7 Copy quote

• The spirit of poetry combines the profundity of the philosopher and the child's delight in bright pictures.

  Franz Grillparzer

  Children, Philosophical, Poetry

  4 Copy quote

• The way in which modern German poetry follows theories reminds me of pupils who, scolded by their teacher for their insubordination, justify themselves by saying that they invented new rules of propriety according to which they are quite well- behaved.

  Franz Grillparzer

  Teacher, Poetry, Way

  13 Copy quote

• The present is never poetic as it serves necessity, necessity, however, is prosaic.

  Franz Grillparzer

  Poetry, Poetic

  4 Copy quote

• A tailor can adapt to any medium, be it poetry, be it criticism. As a poet, he can mend, and with the scissors of criticism he candivide.

  Franz Grillparzer

  Poetry, Criticism, Tailors

  9 Copy quote

• Our poetry emulates the recent progress in military strategy: Our army's strength is the foot soldiers.

  Franz Grillparzer

  Strength, Military, Army

  4 Copy quote

• Why I love the ancients so much? Aside from everything else, when I read them, the entire past between them and me unfolds at thesame time. The hearts of how many heroes and poets may have been set on fire by Plutarch's biographies which now inspire me with their own and with borrowed flames!

  Franz Grillparzer

  Reading, Hero, Heart

  4 Copy quote

• I understand the phrase "Honor the Women" all too well: the poet has probably a wife of his own, but he prefers to honor another.

  Franz Grillparzer

  Wife, Infidelity, Honor

  4 Copy quote

• The plot! The plot! What kind of plot could a poet possibly provide that is not surpassed by the thinking, feeling reader? Form alone is divine.

  Franz Grillparzer

  Thinking, Feelings, Plot

  4 Copy quote

• I was a tiny bug. Now a mountain. I was left behind. Now honored at the head. You healed my wounded hunger and anger, and made me a poet who sings about joy.

  Rumi

  Spiritual, Joy, Growth

  9 Copy quote

• We tend to be so bombarded with information, and we move so quickly, that there's a tendency to treat everything on the surface level and process things quickly. This is antithetical to the kind of openness and perception you have to have to be receptive to poetry.poetry seems to exist in a parallel universe outside daily life in America.

  Rita Dove

  Moving, America, Poetry

  Quoted in N.Y. Times, 20 June 1993

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• the only truth is face to face, the poem whose words become your
  mouth
  and dying in black and white we fight for what we love, not are

  Frank O'Hara

  Truth, Fighting, Black And White

  Frank O'Hara (1969). “Odes”

  29 Copy quote

  Show source

• But sometimes everything I write
  with the threadbare art of my eye
  seems a snapshot

  Robert Lowell

  Art, Eye, Writing

  Robert Lowell (1979). “Robert Lowell: a tribute”

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Those blessed structures, plot and rhyme--
  why are they no help to me now
  I want to make
  something imagined, not recalled?

  Robert Lowell

  Blessed, Poetry, Plot

  Robert Lowell (1979). “Robert Lowell: a tribute”

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• You need to have a God, a lover, and an enemy, says the poet. Exactly: you need to have three enemies.

  Jose Bergamin

  God, Enemy, Three

  4 Copy quote

• I am the scroll of the poet behind which samurai swords are being sharpened.

  Lester Cole

  Deception, Samurai, Behinds

  9 Copy quote

• The poem is lonely. It is lonely and en route. Its author stays with it. Does this very fact not place the poem already here, at its inception, in the encounter, in the mystery of encounter?

  Paul Celan

  Lonely, Loneliness, Poetry

  Paul Celan (2005). “Paul Celan: Selections”, p.164, Univ of California Press

  27 Copy quote

  Show source

• German poetry is going in a very different direction from French poetry.... Its language has become more sober, more factual. It distrusts "beauty." It tries to be truthful.

  Paul Celan

  Beauty, Truth, Poetry

  Paul Celan, Rosemarie Waldrop (2003). “Collected Prose”, p.15, Psychology Press

  24 Copy quote

  Show source

• I have never felt a placard and a poem are in any way similar.

  Kristin Hunter

  Poetry, Politics, Way

  5 Copy quote

• It is the black poet who bridges the gap in tradition, who modifies tradition when experience demands it, who translates experience into meaning and meaning into belief.

  Henry Louis Gates

  Bridges, Black, Demand

  Henry Louis Gates (1989). “Figures in Black: Words, Signs, and the "racial" Self”, p.176, Oxford University Press on Demand

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Know that there is often hidden in us a dormant poet, always young and alive.

  Alfred de Musset

  Alive, Dormant, Young

  7 Copy quote

• Poetry a riprap on the slick rock of metaphysics

  Gary Snyder

  Rocks, Poetry, Slick

  Gary Snyder (1978). “Myths & Texts”, p.48, New Directions Publishing

  5 Copy quote

  Show source