Poetry Is Quotes - Page 8

• Poetry is an investigation, not an expression, of what you know.

  Mark Doty

  Expression, Investigation, Knows

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• Poetry is a dividend from what you know and what you are.

  Czeslaw Milosz

  Knows, Dividends

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• Poetry is like standing on the edge of a lake on a moonlit night and the light of the moon is always pointing straight at you.

  Billy Collins

  Moon, Night, Lakes

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• I like poetry because poetry - even in free verse - is formal, and it has to be very concise and packed and rich, and I like the feeling of having to do that, having to make the language tight and still free, as if the deepest freedom is created by the restrictions.

  Pattiann Rogers

  Feelings, Language, Rich

  Interview with Carolyn Perry and Wayne Zade, poems.com. 2009.

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• Poetry is so close to music, not just in cadence and sound but in silences. That's why, to me, I can't talk about prose poems. I can talk about poetic prose.

  Pattiann Rogers

  Silence, Sound, Cadence

  "A Conversation with Pattiann Rogers". Interview with Carolyn Perry, Wayne Zade, poems.com. 2009.

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• One of the most important differences I see between prose and poetry is the music of the language.

  Pattiann Rogers

  Prose And Poetry, Differences, Important

  "A Conversation with Pattiann Rogers". Interview with Carolyn Perry, Wayne Zade, poems.com. 2009.

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• Poetry is very playful with language. I think all poetry, at its heart, is playful. It's doing unusual and playful things with the language, stirring it up. And prose is not doing that. Primarily it's not attempting to do that.

  Pattiann Rogers

  Heart, Thinking, Language

  "A Conversation with Pattiann Rogers". Interview with Carolyn Perry, Wayne Zade, poems.com. 2009.

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• There are poets who believe that you shouldn't engage at all in any cause. And there's something to be said for that. Because you don't want to - I think most political poetry is very bad. And it's very bad because you know too much to start with. You have a sense that you're right, and you're trying to tell other people what's right. And I think that's always kind of fundamentalism, and I don't like it.

  W. S. Merwin

  Believe, Thinking, People

  Interview with Ed Rampell, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. October 25, 2010.

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• But most love poetry is awful; nobody knows how to write good love poetry either. But that's not a reason not to write love poetry. Some of the best poetry ever written has been love poetry, and some of the greatest poetry ever written has been political poetry.

  W. S. Merwin

  Good Love, Writing, Political

  "An Interview with W. S. Merwin, Poet Laureate". Interview with Ed Rampell, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. October 25, 2010.

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• The Divine Comedy is a political poem and when you say poetry is not about - he's always quoted out of context, that "poetry makes nothing happen," that doesn't mean you shrug your shoulders and don't try to make anything happen. And Dante felt that poetry was engaged, there was a point of view; it's not my point of view, it's orthodox medieval Christianity, and I have my troubles with that. He didn't feel that you could just rule out so important a section of life - we care about these things, and it's out of caring about them that we write poetry.

  W. S. Merwin

  Writing, Mean, Caring

  "An Interview with W. S. Merwin, Poet Laureate". Interview with Ed Rampell, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. October 25, 2010.

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• I think all poetry is accessible in a certain sense if you spend enough time with it.

  Matthea Harvey

  Thinking, Enough Time, Certain

  Source: www.teachingbooks.net

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• Speaking of people I had to exclude: Hank Williams. which is to say, songs are part of lyric poetry in my book, my thinking. In fact they are the urgent element of poetry in our time, they carry the most emotion for the most people in our culture. everyone LOVES poetry, because we all love (one form or another) of rock and roll (be it folk to emo to rap). It's all rock and roll and all lyric poetry.

  Gregory Orr

  Song, Emo, Book

  Source: therumpus.net

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• When I began to dare to be clear, because I think clarity is the real risk in poetry because you are exposed. You're out in the open field. You're actually saying things that are comprehensible, and it's easy to criticize something you can understand.

  Billy Collins

  Real, Thinking, Risk

  "A Brisk Walk". Interview with Joel Whitney, www.guernicamag.com. June 14, 2006.

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• Part of writing is discovering the rules of the game and then deciding whether to follow the rules or to break them. The great thing about the game of poetry is that it's always your turn - I guess that goes back to my being an only child. So once it's under way, there is a sense of flow.

  Billy Collins

  Children, Writing, Games

  "A Brisk Walk". Interview with Joel Whitney, www.guernicamag.com. June 14, 2006.

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• You'll find i-poetry, you'll find that you can download poetry, that you can stuff your i-pod with recorded poetry. So just to answer the question that way, I think that poetry is gonna catch up with that technology quite soon.

  Billy Collins

  Technology, Thinking, Answers

  "A Brisk Walk". Interview with Joel Whitney, www.guernicamag.com. June 14, 2006.

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• Whereas if you were writing an op-ed piece or an essay, somebody would be asking, "What's your point?" With poetry you can stay in a moment for as long as you want. Poetry is about metaphor, about a thing standing in for something else. It's the thing that opens out to something else. What that something else is changes for readers. So what's on the page - it falls away.

  Claudia Rankine

  Fall, Writing, Long

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Poetry is probably the last gift economy. Part of the negotiation is to understand that you're going to do something you really want to do, so you're going to take whatever life comes with that.

  Claudia Rankine

  Want, Lasts, Economy

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• News isn't designed to talk about daily life in its nuances, but poetry is.

  Eliza Griswold

  News, Nuance, Daily Life

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Poetry is a popular genre in Afghanistan. If you turned on the radio, there would be a poetry program that would be as popular as The Real Housewives.

  Eliza Griswold

  Real, Would Be, Radio

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Poetry isn't as relevant in the Western world as it is in Afghanistan. And not many people make time for something that doesn't feel relevant.

  Eliza Griswold

  People, World, Making Time

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• For me, poetry is a form of activism. And that word enables the labelers, and also gives them a rash.

  Fady Joudah

  Giving, Form, Activism

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Political means so many things. We are political willy-nilly. Political poetry is an easy invitation to disaster. But then so is love poetry. But we are a little more patient with bad love poetry.

  Gerald Stern

  Mean, Political, Littles

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Prose poetry is not set to a melody or music so there's something freeing about it.

  William Beckett

  Prose Poetry, Melody, Prose

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• Visual media is the dominant art form in our present day culture, whereas poetry is, at best, a proxy. Yet poetry and film are both "dream factories."

  Denise Duhamel

  Dream, Art, Media

  Source: therumpus.net

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• What poetry does above all else is develop sensibility. And that's what makes poetry so dangerous. That's why poetry is so good at undermining governments and so bad at building them. There's nothing harder to organize than a group of poets.

  Sam Hamill

  Government, Groups, Doe

  Interview with Anne-Marie Cusac, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. March 31, 2003.

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