Poetry Quotes - Page 27

• Writing poetry is the hard manual labor of the imagination.

  Ishmael Reed

  Writing, Imagination, Labor

  Ishmael Reed (1995). “Airing Dirty Laundry”, Perseus Books

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• For poetry, he's past his prime,
  He takes an hour to find a rhyme;
  His fire is out, his wit decayed,
  His fancy sunk, his muse a jade.
  I'd have him throw away his pen,
  But there's no talking to some men.

  Jonathan Swift

  Past, Men, Fire

  Matthew Prior, Jonathan Swift (1853). “Select poems of Prior and Swift [ed. by C. Bathurst].”, p.155

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• Good poetry could not have been otherwise written than it is. The first time you hear it, it sounds rather as if copied out of some invisible tablet in the Eternal mind than as if arbitrarily composed by the poet.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Mind, Sound, Tablets

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1964). “The Early Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.49, Harvard University Press

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• For poetry was all written before time was, and whenever we are so finely organized that we can penetrate into that region where the air is music, we hear those primal warblings, and attempt to write them down, but we lose ever and anon a word, a verse, and substitute something of our own, and thus miswrite the poem.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Writing, Air, Anon

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.187, Penguin

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• A speech is poetry: cadence, rhythm, imagery, sweep! A speech reminds us that words, like children, have the power to make dance the dullest beanbag of a heart.

  Peggy Noonan

  Children, Heart, Speech

  Peggy Noonan, Steven Emerson, Brian Duffy, Thomas J. Watson, Peter Petre (1990). “Today's Best Nonfiction”

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• Yet poetry, though the last and finest result, is a natural fruit. As naturally as the oak bears an acorn, and the vine a gourd, man bears a poem, either spoken or done. It is the chief and most memorable success, for history is but a prose narrative of poetic deeds.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Memorable, Men, Gourds

  Henry David Thoreau (1873). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.99

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• At certain times, men regard poetry merely as a bright flame, but to women it was, and always will be, a warm fire.

  Franz Grillparzer

  Men, Fire, Flames

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• Such is the role of poetry. It unveils, in the strict sense of the word. It lays bare, under a light which shakes off torpor, the surprising things which surround us and which our senses record mechanically.

  Jean Cocteau

  Light, Roles, Records

  "A Call to Order". Book by Jean Cocteau, 1926.

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• The essentials of poetry are rhythm, dance, and the human voice.

  Earle Birney

  Voice, Essentials, Rhythm

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• Poetry is all nouns and verbs.

  Marianne Moore

  Verbs, Nouns, Language

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• I regard a love for poetry as one of the most needful and helpful elements in the life-outfit of a human being. It was the greatest of blessings to me, in the long days of toil to which I was shut in much earlier than most young girls are, that the poetry I held in my memory breathed its enchanted atmosphere through me and around me, and touched even dull drudgery with its sunshine.

  Lucy Larcom

  Girl, Memories, Writing

  Lucy Larcom (1961). “A New England girlhood”

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• Poetry, in a general sense, may be defined to be 'the expression of the imagination': and poetry is connate with the origin of man.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Men, Expression, Imagination

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (2006). “A Defence of Poetry: an Essay: Easyread Large Edition”, p.2, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• All high poetry is infinite; it is as the first acorn, which contained all oaks potentially.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Firsts, Acorns, Infinite

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (1852). “A defence of poetry. Essay on the literature, arts, and manners of the Athenians. Preface to the Banquet of Plato. The banquet”, p.35

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• You must believe: a poem is a holy thing - a good poem, that is. The poem, even a short time after being written, seems no miracle; unwritten, it seems something beyond the capacity of the gods.

  Theodore Roethke

  Believe, Miracle, Holy

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• The poem is a plank laid over the lion's den.

  James K. Baxter

  Lions, Dens

  James K. Baxter, John Edward Weir (1979). “Collected poems”, Oxford University Press, USA

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• Poetry must find ways of breaking distance.... all languages are dialects that are made to break new grounds.

  Giannina Braschi

  Distance, Way, Dialect

  Giannina Braschi (1998). “Yo-yo boing!”, Latin Amer Literary Review Press

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• By failing to read or listen to poets, society dooms itself to inferior modes of articulation, those of the politician, the salesman, or the charlatan. In other words, it forfeits its own evolutionary potential. For what distinguishes us from the rest of the animal kingdom is precisely the gift of speech. Poetry is not a form of entertainment and in a certain sense not even a form of art, but it is our anthropological, genetic goal. Our evolutionary, linguistic beacon.

  Joseph Brodsky

  Art, Animal, Goal

  Joseph Brodsky's opening remarks as United States Poet Laureate, October 1991.

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• Some rhyme a neebor's name to lash;
  Some rhyme (vain thought!) for needfu' cash;
  Some rhyme to court the countra clash,
  An' raise a din;
  For me, an aim I never fash;
  I rhyme for fun.

  Robert Burns

  Fun, Names, Cash

  'To J. S[mith]' (1786) st. 5

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• Our poetry now is the realization that we possess nothing. Anything therefore is a delight (since we do not posses it) and thus need not fear its loss.

  John Cage

  Loss, Needs, Realization

  "Silence: Lectures and Writings". Book by John Cage, 1959.

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• Poetry, therefore, we will call Musical Thought.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Musical

  Thomas Carlyle (1864). “Sartor Resartus”, p.247

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• A poet should leave traces of his passage, not proofs. Traces alone engender dreams.

  Rene Char

  Dream, Should, Proof

  "The French-American Review" by Texas Christian University, p. 132, 1976.

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• An undevout poet is an impossibility.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Poet, Impossibility

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1908). “Lectures and Notes on Shakespeare and Other English Poets”

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• No man was ever yet a great poet, without being at the same time a profound philosopher. For poetry is the blossom and the fragrance of all human knowledge, human thoughts, human passions, emotions, language.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Passion, Men, Profound

  "Biographia Literaria". Book by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ch. XV, 1817.

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• If you examine the highest poetry in the light of common sense, you can only say that it is rubbish; and in actual fact you cannot so examine it at all, because there is something in poetry which is not in the words themselves, which is not in the images suggested by the words 'O windy star blown sideways up the sky!' True poetry is itself a magic spell which is a key to the ineffable.

  Aleister Crowley

  Stars, Light, Sky

  Aleister Crowley (2014). “Eight Lectures on Yoga”, p.100, Lulu Press, Inc

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• I'm a poetry-skipper myself. I don't like to boast, but I have probably skipped more poetry than any other person of my age and weight in this country - make it any other two persons. This doesn't mean that I hate poetry. I don't feel that strongly about it. It only means that those who wish to communicate with me by means of the written word must do so in prose.

  Will Cuppy

  Country, Hate, Mean

  "How to Get From January to December". Book by Will Cuppy, 1951.

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