Poetry Quotes

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  Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.

  William Wordsworth

  Powerful, Feelings, Emotion

  Lyrical Ballads 2nd ed., preface (1802) See Dorothy Parker 24

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• People who read poetry have heard about the burning bush, but when you write poetry, you sit inside the burning bush.

  Li-Young Lee

  Reading, Writing, People

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• There is not a particle of life which does not bear poetry within it

  Gustave Flaubert

  Inspirational, Life, Doe

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• Ink runs from the corners of my mouth. There is no happiness like mine. I have been eating poetry.

  Mark Strand

  Running, Ink, Mouths

  "Eating Poetry" l. 1 (1980)

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• The moment of change is the only poem.

  Adrienne Rich

  Change, Healing, Poetic

  Adrienne Rich (1971). “The Will to Change: Poems 1968-1970”, p.47, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Poetry is the journal of the sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air. Poetry is a search for syllables to shoot at the barriers of the unknown and the unknowable. Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away.

  Carl Sandburg

  Life, Animal, Air

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• Whatever is not stone is light

  Octavio Paz

  Light, Mexican, Shining

  Octavio Paz, Eliot Weinberger, G. Aroul (1984). “Selected Poems”, p.4, New Directions Publishing

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• Poetry is music written for the human voice.

  Maya Angelou

  Voice, Humans, Written

  1989 In' The Power of the Word', Public Broadcasting Service,15 Sep.

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• Poetry should begin with emotion in the poet, and end with the same emotion in the reader. The poem is simply the instrument of transferance.

  Philip Larkin

  Emotion, Ends, Should

  BBC Third Programme, April 13, 1956.

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• Poetry is the opening and closing of a door, leaving those who look through to guess about what is seen during the moment.

  Carl Sandburg

  Doors, Closing Up, Leaving

  Atlantic Monthly Mar. 1923 "Poetry Considered"

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• Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.

  Robert Frost

  Emotion, Found, Great Poet

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• I grew up in this town, my poetry was born between the hill and the river, it took its voice from the rain, and like the timber, it steeped itself in the forests.

  Pablo Neruda

  Rain, Voice, Rivers

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• Prose talks and poetry sings.

  Franz Grillparzer

  Prose

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• I was reading the dictionary. I thought it was a poem about everything.

  Steven Wright

  Funny, Life, Reading

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• When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.

  John F. Kennedy

  Patriotic, Power, Men

  Remarks upon receiving an honorary degree from Amherst College, Amherst, Mass., 26 Oct. 1963

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• Poets are masters of us ordinary men, in knowledge of the mind, because they drink at streams which we have not yet made accessible to science.

  Sigmund Freud

  Knowledge, Men, Mind

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• If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?

  Emily Dickinson

  Book, Taken, Fire

  Quoted in Martha Bianchi, Life and Letters of Emily Dickinson (1924)

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• 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

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• Poetry is all that is worth remembering in life.

  William Hazlitt

  Remember, Poetry Is

  William Hazlitt (1845). “Lectures on the English Poets”, p.2

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• Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Beauty, Thoughtful, Poetic

  "The Poetic Principle". Essay by Edgar Allan Poe, 1850.

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• A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.

  Robert Frost

  Inspiration, Delight, Icy

  Collected Poems preface (1939)

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• Poetry: the best words in the best order.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Writing, Vocabulary, Prose Poetry

  Table Talk 12 July 1827 (1835)

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• Poetry is good for unleashing images.

  Paula Rego

  Unleashing, Poetry Is

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• All I do and say and think 'as a poet' is much truer and more intimate than anything I say face to face.

  Selima Hill

  Thinking, Faces, Intimate

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• A long poem is a test of invention which I take to be the Polar star of poetry, as fancy is the sails, and imagination the rudder.

  John Keats

  Stars, Long, Imagination

  Letter to Benjamin Bailey, 8 October 1817, in H. E. Rollins (ed.) 'The Letters of John Keats' (1958) vol. 1, p. 170

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