Poetry Quotes - Page 21

• But it's silly to suggest the writing of poetry is something ethereal, a sort of soul-crashing, devastating emotional experience that wrings you. I have no fancy ideas about poetry. ... It doesn't come to you on the wings of a dove. It's something you have to work hard at.

  Louise Bogan

  Silly, Hard Work, Writing

  Louise Bogan, Ruth Limmer (1981). “Journey around my room: the autobiography of Louise Bogan : a mosaic”, Viking Pr

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• Poetry is often generations in advance of the thought of its time.

  Louise Bogan

  Generations, Poetry Is

  Louise Bogan (1970). “A Poet's Alphabet: Reflections on the Literary Art and Vocation”, New York : McGraw-Hill

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• But poetry is not to be lived, except for the few to whom it is more important than self-preservation.

  Rosamond Lehmann

  Self, Important, Preservation

  Rosamond Lehmann (1975). “The ballad and the source”, Harvest Books

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• The poets have familiarized more people with history than have the historians.

  Barbara Tuchman

  People, History, Historian

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• One way of ending the poem is to turn it back on itself, like a serpent with its tail in its mouth.

  Maxine Kumin

  Tails, Mouths, Way

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• Poetry and preaching do not go well together; when the preacher mounts the pulpit the poet usually goes away.

  Edith Hamilton

  Together, Pulpit, Preacher

  Edith Hamilton (1957). “The Roman Way to Western Civilization”

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• my poems covered the bare places in my childhood like the fine, new skin under a scab that hasn't yet fallen off completely.

  Tove Ditlevsen

  Childhood, Skins, Scabs

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• clarity need not be equivalent to / readability. How readable is the world?

  Rae Armantrout

  Needs, World, Clarity

  Rae Armantrout (2007). “Collected Prose”

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• Grandfather / advised me: / Learn a trade / I learned / to sit at desk / and condense / No layoff / from this / condensery.

  Lorine Niedecker

  Grandfather, Desks, Trade

  Lorine Niedecker, Jenny Lynn Penberthy (2002). “Collected Works”, p.194, Univ of California Press

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• As a direct line to human feeling, empathic experience, genuine language and detail, poetry is everything that headline news is not. It takes us inside situations, helps us imagine life from more than one perspective, honors imagery and metaphor - those great tools of thought - and deepens our confidence in a meaningful world.

  Naomi Shihab Nye

  Meaningful, Perspective, Feelings

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• The act of making poetry is an act of hope.

  Natasha Trethewey

  Poetry Is

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• If there is anything I love most, in the poems I love, it is the audible braiding of that bravery, that essential empty-handedness, and that willingness to be taken by surprise, all in one voice.

  Jorie Graham

  Taken, Voice, Bravery

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• True poetry, like the religious prompting itself, springs from the emotional side of a man's complex nature, and is ever in harmony with his highest intuitions and aspirations.

  Epes Sargent

  Religious, Spring, Men

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• My ear is not working, my poetry ear. I can't write a line that doesn't sound like pots and pans falling out of the cupboard.

  Jane Kenyon

  Fall, Writing, Ears

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• I would rather read poetry than eat my dinner any day. It has been so all my life.

  Laura E. Richards

  Dinner, Has Beens

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• I believe that poets have to be inside their poems somewhere, or the poem won't work.

  Joy Harjo

  Believe, I Believe, Poet

  Joy Harjo, Laura Coltelli (1996). “The spiral of memory: interviews”, Univ of Michigan Pr

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• I guess the quality that makes one write poetry keeps one from selling it.

  Louise Closser Hale

  Writing, Quality, Selling

  Louise Closser Hale (1912). “Her Soul and Her Body”

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• My publishers will make any kind of a beautiful book I design and send in to them, but ... For poetry they have less use than a rooster would have for skates.

  Gene Stratton-Porter

  Beautiful, Book, Design

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• You can't make poetry out of thought; poetry is passion. Linear thought must be seduced by wild mind, by the fires of ecstasy.

  Jennifer Stone

  Passion, Fire, Mind

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• Writing poetry is like always being in love. What masochism! What luxury!

  Jennifer Stone

  Writing, Being In Love, Luxury

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• For a poet, style is the only morality.

  Jennifer Stone

  Style, Morality, Poet

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• I blessed the power which has filled my life with poetry.

  Mary Butts

  Blessed, Filled

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• when a poem says something that could not have been said in any other way, in music, prose, sculpture, movement or paint, then it is poetry.

  Sybil Marshall

  Sculpture, Movement, Way

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• Only that is poetry which cleanses and mans me.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1870). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.294, Рипол Классик

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• Every great poem is in itself limited by necessity, but in its suggestions unlimited and infinite.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Suggestions, Infinite, Unlimited

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1872). “Outre Mer. Driftwood”

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