Poetry Reading Quotes

• Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.

  Rita Dove

  Powerful, Reading Poetry, Language

  13 Copy quote

• The writing of a poem is like a child throwing stones into a mineshaft. You compose first, then you listen for the reverberation.

  James Fenton

  Children, Writing, Poetry

  The Independent on Sunday, June 24, 1990.

  53 Copy quote

  Show source

• All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.

  Oscar Wilde

  Spring, Book, Reading

  Oscar Wilde (2005). “The Prose of Oscar Wilde”, p.186, Cosimo, Inc.

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• Poetry is everywhere; it just needs editing.

  James Tate

  Editing, Reading Poetry, Needs

  James Tate (1999). “The route as briefed”, Univ of Michigan Pr

  50 Copy quote

  Show source

• Publishing a volume of verse is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo.

  Don Marquis

  Education, Learning, Knowledge

  Don Marquis, William McCollum (1982). “Selected letters of Don Marquis”, Northwoods Pr

  25 Copy quote

  Show source

• Poetry should surprise by a fine excess and not by singularity, it should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.

  John Keats

  Inspirational, Reading Poetry, Remembrance

  Letter to John Taylor, 27 February 1818, in H. E. Rollins (ed.) 'The Letters of John Keats' (1958) vol. 1, p. 238

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.

  Khalil Gibran

  Pain, Reading Poetry, Joy

  Khalil Gibran “The New Frontier and Sand and Foam”, Library of Alexandria

  85 Copy quote

  Show source
• 

  Two roads diverged in a wood and I - I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.

  Robert Frost

  Inspirational, Motivational, Happiness

  "The Road Not Taken" l. 16 (1916)

  192 Copy quote

  Show source

• Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.

  T. S. Eliot

  Art, Writing, Reading Poetry

  The Sacred Wood "Philip Massinger" (1920)

  24 Copy quote

  Show source

• Poetry is ordinary language raised to the Nth power.

  Paul Engle

  Reading Poetry, Language And Power, Ordinary

  New York Times, February 17, 1957.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Poetry is ordinary language raised to the Nth power. Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words.

  Paul Engle

  Ideas, Reading Poetry, Skins

  New York Times, February 17, 1957.

  48 Copy quote

  Show source

• If I could take all my parts with me when I go somewhere / and not have to say to one of them, ‘No, you stay home tonight, you won’t be welcome’/ because I’m going to an all-white party where I can be gay but not Black / Or I’m going to a Black poetry reading, and half the poets are anti-homosexual / or thousands of situations where something of what I am cannot come with me / The day all the different parts of me can come along / we would have what I would call / a revolution

  Pat Parker

  Party, Reading, Home

  35 Copy quote

• If I do a poetry reading I want people to walk out and say they feel better for having been there - not because you've done a comedy performance but because you're talking about your father dying or having young children, things that touch your soul

  Roger McGough

  Children, Father, Reading

  "Emma Brockes interview: Roger McGough". www.theguardian.com. November 14, 2005.

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• I hope any poem I've ever written could stand on its own and not need to be a part of biography, critical theory or cultural studies. I don't want to give a poetry reading and have to provide the story behind the poem in order for it to make sense to an audience. I certainly don't want the poem to require a critical intermediary - a "spokescritic." I want my poems to be independently meaningful moments of power for a good reader. And that's the expectation I initially bring to other poets' writing.

  Albert Goldbarth

  Meaningful, Reading, Writing

  Source: muse.jhu.edu

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I never really liked poetry readings; I liked to read poetry by myself, but I liked singing, chanting my lyrics to this jazz group.

  Leonard Cohen

  Reading, Singing, Groups

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I guess I've done a lot of different kinds of performing at various times - opera singing, poetry reading, not least high school teaching - and I do enjoy it, at least sometimes. But I find it incredibly anxiety-producing and exhausting. Privacy is more congenial, and I go a little crazy if I can't spend a big chunk of every day, or almost every day, alone. Certainly I have to be alone to write.

  Garth Greenwell

  Crazy, Teaching, Reading

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• If I'm still wistful about On the Road, I look on the rest of the Kerouac oeuvre--the poems, the poems!--in horror. Read Satori in Paris lately? But if I had never read Jack Kerouac's horrendous poems, I never would have had the guts to write horrendous poems myself. I never would have signed up for Mrs. Safford's poetry class the spring of junior year, which led me to poetry readings, which introduced me to bad red wine, and after that it's all just one big blurry condemned path to journalism and San Francisco.

  Sarah Vowell

  Spring, Reading, Writing

  FaceBook post by Sarah Vowell from Sep 05, 2015

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• Of course a poem is a two-way street. No poem is any good if it doesn't suggest to the reader things from his own mind and recollection that he will read into it, and will add to what the poet has suggested. But I do think poetry readings are very important.

  James Laughlin

  Reading, Thinking, Two

  7 Copy quote

• I just think that the world of workshops - I've written a poem that is a parody of workshop talk, I've written a poem that is a kind of parody of a garrulous poet at a poetry reading who spends an inordinate amount of time explaining the poem before reading it, I've written a number of satirical poems about other poets.

  Billy Collins

  Reading, Thinking, Numbers

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

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• I'm a professional and I'll do anything - a poetry reading, television, cinema, anything that allows me to act.

  Peter O'Toole

  Reading, Cinema, Television

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• It's not a love of poetry readings that attracts those who do come to them but theater.

  A. R. Ammons

  Reading, Theater

  4 Copy quote

• I do believe that one's writing life needs to be kept separate from Po-Biz. Personally, I deal with this by not attending too many poetry readings, primarily reading dead poets or poems in translation, reading Poets & Writers only once for grant/contest information before I quickly dispose of it, and not reading Poetry Daily. Ever.

  Cate Marvin

  Believe, Reading, Writing

  Source: www.redividerjournal.org

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I was reading poetry to my girlfriends, and they were like, you're really good. You should go to some poetry readings or something. And I eventually went and got a, you know, somewhat of a name for myself and a little bit of a following.

  Jill Scott

  Girlfriend, Reading, Names

  "Jill Scott: Act The Part". "All Things Considered" with Laura Sullivan, www.npr.org. June 18, 2011.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• I think that is where poetry reading becomes such an individual thing. I mean I have friend who like poets who just don't say anything to me at all, I mean they seem to me rather ordinary and pedestrian.

  James Laughlin

  Reading, Mean, Thinking

  7 Copy quote

• We have seen the best minds of our generation destroyed by boredom at poetry readings.

  Lawrence Ferlinghetti

  Reading, Our Generation, Boredom

  Lawrence Ferlinghetti (2001). “San Francisco Poems”, p.2, City Lights Books

  30 Copy quote

  Show source