Poetry Quotes - Page 24

• Mr Witwould: "Pray, madam, do you pin up your hair with all your letters? I find I must keep copies." Mrs Millamant: "Only with those in verse.... I never pin up my hair with prose."

  William Congreve

  Hair, Letters, Praying

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• Most joyful let the Poet be, it is through him that all men see.

  William Ellery Channing

  Men, Joyful, Poet

  William Ellery Channing (1843). “Poems”

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• Then one can't make a living out of poetry? Certainly not. What fool expects to? Out of rhyming, yes.

  Jack London

  Rhyming, Fool

  Jack London (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Jack London (Illustrated)”, p.1475, Delphi Classics

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• Paraphrase, in the sense of summary, is as indispensable to the novel-critic as close analysis is to the critic of lyric poetry. The natural deduction is that novels are paraphrasable whereas poems are not. But this is a false deduction because close analysis is itself a disguised form of paraphrase.

  David Lodge

  Lyric Poetry, Analysis, Literature

  David Lodge (2002). “Language of Fiction: Essays in Criticism and Verbal Analysis of the English Novel”, p.37, Psychology Press

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• A man should have a farm or a mechanical craft for his culture. We must have a basis for our higher accomplishments, our delicate entertainments of poetry and philosophy, in the work of our hands.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Philosophy, Men, Hands

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1166, Delphi Classics

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• From it's inception Beat poetry was hailed as "something NEW" and "like all good spontaneous jazz, newness is acceptable and expected - by hip people who listen." But the newness of jazz has in it the echoes of J. S. Bach.

  Allen Ginsberg

  Echoes, People, Hips

  Allen Ginsberg, Lewis Hyde (1984). “On the Poetry of Allen Ginsberg”, p.169, University of Michigan Press

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• Poetry is an art, the easiest to dabble in, but the hardest to reach true excellence.

  John Gabriel Stedman

  Art, Excellence, Hardest

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• We're talking about an extremely prolific poet and songwriter and lyricist. That stuff comes off the top of her head. She [Joni Mitchell] will write exactly what she lives. If she puts some money in the soda machine, she'll write about putting money in the soda machine. "Dry Cleaner from Des Moines," on the Shadows & Light album, was about sitting next to a dry cleaner from Des Moines, playing a slot machine.

  Don Alias

  Writing, Talking, Light

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• Inspiration is needed in geometry, just as much as in poetry.

  Alexander Pushkin

  Inspirational, Math, Geometry

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• You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

  Mario Cuomo

  Political, Campaigns, Politics

  The New Republic, April 04, 1985.

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• There is no Frigate like a book to take us lands away nor any coursers like a page of prancing Poetry.

  Emily Dickinson

  Book, Reading, Land

  "There is no frigate like a book" l. 1 (ca. 1873)

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• A poem is a naked person... Some people say that I am a poet.

  Bob Dylan

  People, Naked, Persons

  Bob Dylan (2014). “The Lyrics: Since 1962”, p.170, Simon and Schuster

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• We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.

  T. S. Eliot

  Inspirational, Funny, Life

  Four Quartets "Little Gidding" pt. 5 (1942)

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• This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper.

  T. S. Eliot

  Death, Religion, Bangs

  "The Hollow Men" l. 95 (1925)

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• Poetry may make us from time to time a little more aware of the deeper, unnamed feelings which form the substratum of our being, to which we rarely penetrate; for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves.

  T. S. Eliot

  Feelings, May, Littles

  T. S. Eliot (1986). “The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism: Studies in the Relation of Criticism to Poetry in England”, p.149, Harvard University Press

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• Thinking in its lower grades, is comparable to paper money, and in its higher forms it is a kind of poetry.

  Havelock Ellis

  Money, Thinking, Paper

  havelock ellis (1923). “the dance of life”

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• We Negro writers, just by being black, have been on the blacklist all our lives. Censorship for us begins at the color line.

  Langston Hughes

  Color, Racism, Black

  Langston Hughes (2002). “Essays on art, race, politics, and world affairs”

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• They dined on mince, and slices of quince, Which they ate with a runcible spoon; And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand, They danced by the light of the moon.

  Edward Lear

  Dance, Food, Moon

  "The Owl and the Pussy-Cat" l. 21 (1871)

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• There'll always be working people in my poems because I grew up with them, and I am a poet of memory.

  Philip Levine

  Memories, People, Grew Up

  Philip Levine (2002). “So ask: essays, conversations, and interviews”, Univ of Michigan Pr

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• My favourite poem is the one that starts 'Thirty days hath September' because it actually tells you something.

  Groucho Marx

  Inspiration, September 11, Favourite

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• Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Love, Life, Sexy

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• No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.

  Booker T. Washington

  Inspirational, Work, Writing

  Address at Atlanta International Exposition, Atlanta, Ga., 18 Sept. 1895

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• I know that I shall meet my fate somewhere among the clouds above; those that I fight I do not hate, those that I guard I do not love.

  William Butler Yeats

  Hate, Fighting, Fate

  "An Irish Airman Foresees His Death" l. 1 (1919)

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• The Road goes ever on and on Down from the door where it began. Now far ahead the Road has gone, And I must follow, if I can, Pursuing it with eager feet, Until it joins some larger way Where many paths and errands meet. And whither then? I cannot say

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Doors, Feet, Books And Movies

  The Fellowship of the Ring bk. 1, ch. 1 (1954)

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• Always learn poems by heart. They have to become the marrow in your bones. Like fluoride in the water, they'll make your soul impervious to the world's soft decay.

  Janet Fitch

  Heart, Water, Soul

  Janet Fitch (2002). “White Oleander”, Large Print Press

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