Poetry Quotes - Page 23

• In any period it is upon a very small minority that the discerning appreciation of art and literature depends ... They are still a minority, though a larger one, who are capable of endorsing such first-hand judgement by genuine personal response.

  F. R. Leavis

  Appreciation, Art, Hands

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• This capacity for oversignifying, for reading in, is precisely what poets tap into, both in their own practice and in the poem the give to the reader; and in doing so they turn language against its own project of conceptual division, and use it to heal itself - and in the process - paradoxically - to articulate new concepts that it can't yet accommodate.

  Don Paterson

  Reading, Heal Itself, Practice

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• Lakoff's idea is that most of our thought is guided by underlying conceptual mappings between two domains that share some content, that overlap in the sets of their attributes. ... Contrary to the assertions of Lakoff and some of the cognitive metaphor theorists, people can read through to an underlying mapping, but only when the surface metaphor is new to them.

  Don Paterson

  Ideas, Two, People

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• I feel that at any stage of my literary career it could have been said that the last book contained all the others.

  V. S. Naipaul

  Book, Careers, Literature

  V. S. Naipaul (2012). “Literary Occasions: Essays”, p.190, Pan Macmillan

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• In poetry, even discourse about doubts must be cast in a discourse that cannot be doubted.

  Mikhail Bakhtin

  Doubt, Literature, Casts

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• The 'open text' often emphasizes or foregrounds process, either the process of the original composition or of subsequent compositions by readers.

  Lyn Hejinian

  Literature, Process, Reader

  Lyn Hejinian (2000). “The Language of Inquiry”, p.43, Univ of California Press

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• I feel that the task of criticizing my poetry is best left to others (i.e. critics) and would much rather have it take place after I am dead. If at all.

  Margaret Atwood

  Tasks, Criticize, Critics

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• Painting gives the object itself; poetry what it implies. Painting embodies what a thing contains in itself; poetry suggests what exists out of it, in any manner connected with it.

  William Hazlitt

  Giving, Painting, Connected

  William Hazlitt (1859). “Lectures on the English comic writers, and Lectures on the English poets”

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• He must be theory-mad beyond redemption who ... shall ... persist in attempting to reconcile the obstinate oils and waters of Poetry and Truth.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Oil And Water, Mad, Redemption

  Edgar Allan Poe (1876). “Poems and Essays of Edgar Allan Poe: Including Memoir”, p.162

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• Poetry isn't an activity, it's a way life is lived.

  Vanna Bonta

  Life, Way, Activity

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• It is interesting to note that poetry, a literary device whose very construct involves the use of words, is itself the word of choice by persons grasping to describe something so beautiful it is marvelously ineffable.

  Vanna Bonta

  Beautiful, Interesting, Choices

  "The Cosmos as a Poem". Book by Vanna Bonta., 2010.

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• Poetry absolves spirituality from the dividedness of religions and provides us with a sanctuary that excludes no one.

  Vanna Bonta

  Sanctuary, Spirituality

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• Poetry is a subset of a Cosmos, which in itself, is a poem.

  Vanna Bonta

  Cosmos, Poetry Is

  "The Cosmos as a Poem". Book by Vanna Bonta, 2010.

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• Poetry is our heart, our spirit, our soul. Call it whatever; without it, everything else is nothing but hardware.

  Vanna Bonta

  Heart, Soul, Spirit

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• I want to be able to touch every part of our community with poetry.

  Clinton D. Powell

  Community, Want, Able

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• There is an Arabic writer who wrote philosophy and poetry and who brought all religions and all the world together.

  Salma Hayek

  Philosophy, Together, World

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• I like the one about the little soulworms that fly out of the nest for the resurrection.

  Henry Miller

  Soul, Nests, Littles

  Henry Miller (1961). “The Cosmological Eye”, p.147, New Directions Publishing

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• Poetry comes with anger, hunger and dismay; it does not often visit groups of citizens sitting down to be literary together, and would appal them if it did.

  Christopher Morley

  Together, Sitting Down, Groups

  Christopher Morley (1931). “John Mistletoe”, Doubleday, Doran

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• I pulled a book by Robinson Jeffers off the shelf one day. It was powerfully moving. Tears ran down my face. That's when I became a poet.

  William Everson

  Moving, Book, Tears

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• The poet speaks adequately only when he speaks somewhat wildly... not with intellect alone, but with intellect inebriated by nectar.

  Henry Miller

  Speak, Nectar, Intellect

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• The poetry of speech.

  Lord Byron

  Speech

  Lord Byron (2015). “Childe Harold's Pilgrimage”, p.97, Sheba Blake Publishing

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• [I]n every part of this eastern world, from Pekin to Damascus, the popular teachers of moral wisdom have immemorially been poets.

  William Jones

  Teacher, World, Moral

  Sir William Jones (1875). “Eleven Discourses: Containing His Anniversary Addresses on History, Civil and Natural, the Antiquities, Arts, Sciences and Literature of Asia”, p.129

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• This poem will never reach its destination. On Rousseau's Ode To Posterity

  Voltaire

  Odes, Destination, Posterity

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• Poetry is what Milton saw when he went blind.

  Don Marquis

  Saws, Blind, Milton

  Quoted in Edward Anthony, O Rare Don Marquis (1962)

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• Poetry should only occupy the idle.

  Lord Byron

  Art, Should, Idle

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