Poetry Is Quotes - Page 17

Poetry is that magic which consists in awakening sensations with the help of a combination of sounds ... that sorcery by which ideas are necessarily communicated to us, in a definite way, by words which nevertheless do not express them.

John Banville

Art, Ideas, Poetry

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The poem, in a sense, is no more or less than a little machine for remembering itself ... Poetry is therefore primarily a commemorative act.

Don Paterson

Art, Poetry, Machines

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Poetry is not the record of an event: it is an event.

Robert Lowell

Art, Poetry, Events

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I am one of those who hold that poetry is never so blithe as in a wanton and irregular subject.

Michel de Montaigne

Poetry, Blithe, Subjects

Michel de Montaigne (1958). “Complete Essays”, p.145, Stanford University Press

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A true poem is distinguished not so much by a felicitous expression, or any thought it suggests, as by the atmosphere which surrounds it. Most have beauty of outline merely, and are striking as the form and bearing of a stranger; but true verses come toward us indistinctly, as the very breath of all friendliness, and envelop us in their spirit and fragrance.

Henry David Thoreau

Beauty, Expression, Poetry

Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.279, Delphi Classics

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Poetry is the mysticism of mankind.

Henry David Thoreau

Poetry, Mankind, Mysticism

Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Quotable Thoreau: An A to Z Glossary of Inspiring Quotations from Henry David Thoreau”, p.77, BookBaby

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When I stand in a library where is all the recorded wit of the world, but none of the recording, a mere accumulated, and not trulycumulative treasure; where immortal works stand side by side with anthologies which did not survive their month, and cobweb and mildew have already spread from these to the binding of those; and happily I am reminded of what poetry is,--I perceive that Shakespeare and Milton did not foresee into what company they were to fall. Alas! that so soon the work of a true poet should be swept into such a dust-hole!

Henry David Thoreau

Fall, Dust, Poetry

Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.256, Delphi Classics

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Much verse fails of being poetry because it was not written exactly at the right crisis, though it may have been inconceivably near to it. It is only by a miracle that poetry is written at all. It is not recoverable thought, but a hue caught from a vaster receding thought.

Henry David Thoreau

Inspirational, Miracle, Poetry

Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.246, Delphi Classics

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The science of Humboldt is one thing, poetry is another thing. The poet to-day, notwithstanding all the discoveries of science, and the accumulated learning of mankind, enjoys no advantage over Homer.

Henry David Thoreau

Science, Discovery, Poetry

Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.405, Penguin

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Milton says, that the lyric poet may drink wine and live generously, but the epic poet, he who shall sing of the gods, and their descent unto men, must drink water out of a wooden bowl. For poetry is not "Devil's wine," but God's wine.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Inspirational, Wine, Epic

Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1425, Delphi Classics

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O cloud-pale eyelids, dream-dimmed eyes,
The poets labouring all their days
To build a perfect beauty in rhyme
Are overthrown by a woman's gaze.

William Butler Yeats

Beauty, Dream, Women

William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.54, Wordsworth Editions

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Poetry is the renewal of words, setting them free, and that's what a poet is doing: loosening the words.

Robert Frost

Poetry, Renewal, Settings

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A poet's object is not to tell what actually happened but what could or would happen either probably or inevitably.... For this reason poetry is something more scientific and serious than history, because poetry tends to give general truths while history gives particular facts.

Aristotle

Truth, History, Giving

Aristotle, Longinus, Demetrius (of Phaleron) (1932). “The poetics”

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Primitive times are lyrical, ancient times epical, modern times dramatic. The ode sings of eternity, the epic imparts solemnity tohistory, the drama depicts life. The characteristic of the first poetry is ingeniousness, of the second, simplicity, of the third, truth.

Victor Hugo

Drama, Epic, History

Victor Hugo (1909). “The Works of Victor Hugo ...”

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... the reason why there are so few first-class poets is that many people have intense feelings or first-class minds but to get the two together so that you will be willing to put a poem through sixty drafts, to be that self-critical, to keep breaking it down, that is what is rare. Right now most poetry is just self-indulgence.

May Sarton

Self, Class, Two

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Poetry is a finikin thing of air
That lives uncertainly and not for long
Yet radiantly beyond much lustier blurs.

Wallace Stevens

Air, Long, Poetry

Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p.155, Vintage

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... in a history of spiritual rupture, a social compact built on fantasy and collective secrets, poetry becomes more necessary than ever: it keeps the underground aquifers flowing; it is the liquid voice that can wear through stone.

Adrienne Rich

Spiritual, Aquifers, Voice

Adrienne Rich (2003). “What Is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics (Expanded Edition)”, p.104, W. W. Norton & Company

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As we speak of poetical beauty, so ought we to speak of mathematical beauty and medical beauty. But we do not do so; and that reason is that we know well what is the object of mathematics, and that it consists in proofs, and what is the object of medicine, and that it consists in healing. But we do not know in what grace consists, which is the object of poetry.

Blaise Pascal

Beauty, Healing, Medicine

Blaise Pascal (2010). “Thoughts, Letters & Minor Works”, p.17, Cosimo, Inc.

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Poetry is concerned with using with abusing, with losing
with wanting, with denying with avoiding with adoring
with replacing the noun. It is doing that always
doing that, doing that and doing nothing but that.
Poetry is doing nothing but using losing refusing and
pleasing and betraying and caressing nouns. That is
what poetry does, that is what poetry has to do no
matter what kind of poetry it is. And there are a
great many kinds of poetry.

Gertrude Stein

Poetry, Doe, Nouns

Gertrude Stein (1998). “Writings, 1903-1932: Q.E.D., Three lives, Portraits and other short works, The autobiography of Alice B. Toklas”

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Poetry is a very complex art.... It is an art of pure sound bound in through an art of arbitrary and conventional symbols.

Ezra Pound

Art, Poetry, Sound

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Poetry is essentially the antithesis of Metaphysics: Metaphysics purge the mind of the senses and cultivate the disembodiment of the spiritual; Poetry is all passionate and feeling and animates the inanimate; Metaphysics are most perfect when concerned with universals; Poetry, when most concerned with particulars.

Samuel Beckett

Spiritual, Philosophical, Perfect

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Poetry is the most direct and simple means of expressing oneself in words: the most primitive nations have poetry, but only quitewell developed civilizations can produce good prose. So don't think of poetry as a perverse and unnatural way of distorting ordinary prose statements: prose is a much less natural way of speaking than poetry is. If you listen to small children, and to the amount of chanting and singsong in their speech, you'll see what I mean.

Northrop Frye

Children, Mean, Thinking

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The belief in poetry is a magnificent fury, or it is nothing.

Wallace Stevens

Belief, Fury, Magnificent

Wallace Stevens, Holly Stevens (1966). “Letters of Wallace Stevens”, p.446, Univ of California Press

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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

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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

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