Poetry Quotes - Page 3

• For me, poetry is an impish attempt to paint the colour of the wind.

  Maxwell Bodenheim

  Wind, Paint, Colour

  45 Copy quote

• There is a pleasure in poetic pains / Which only poets know.

  William Cowper

  Pain, Poetic, Pleasure

  'The Task' (1785) bk. 2 'The Timepiece' l. 285

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• A perfect poem is impossible. Once it had been written, the world would end.
  Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.

  Robert Graves

  Perfect, Immature, World

  8 Copy quote

• Well, write poetry, for God's sake, it's the only thing that matters.

  e. e. cummings

  Writing, Sake, Matter

  11 Copy quote

• To break the pentameter, that was the first heave

  Ezra Pound

  Firsts, Break

  Ezra Pound (1996). “The Cantos of Ezra Pound”, p.538, New Directions Publishing

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• You I am sure will forgive me for sincerely remarking that you might curb your magnanimity and be more of an artist, and 'load every rift' of your subject with ore.

  Bob Dylan

  Artist, Forgive Me, Forgiving

  56 Copy quote

• Milton, Madam, was a genius that could cut a Colossus from a rock; but could not carve heads upon cherry-stones.

  Samuel Johnson

  Cutting, Rocks, Genius

  To Hannah More, who had expressed a wonder that the poet who had written 'Paradise Lost' should write such poor Sonnets, in James Boswell 'The Life of Samuel Johnson' (1791) vol. 4, p. 305 (13 June 1784)

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Poetry is prose, bent out of shape.

  J. Patrick Lewis

  Shapes, Bent, Prose

  7 Copy quote

• I have said that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity: the emotion is contemplated till, by a species of reaction, the tranquillity gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind.

  William Wordsworth

  Powerful, Feelings, Mind

  William Wordsworth, Dorothy Wordsworth (1815). “Poems”, p.388

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Poetry is itself a thing of God;
  He made his prophets poets; and the more
  We feel of poesie do we become
  Like God in love and power,-under-makers.

  Philip James Bailey

  Prophet, Makers, Made

  Philip James Bailey (1857). “Festus: a poem”, p.10

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• For it is not metres, but a metre-making argument that makes a poem.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Argument

  1844 Essays: Second Series,'The Poet'.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• He who writes prose builds his temple to Fame in rubble; he who writes verses builds it in granite.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Writing, Temples, Fame

  52 Copy quote

• A poet is a bird of unearthly excellence, who escapes from his celestial realm arrives in this world warbling. If we do not cherish him, he spreads his wings and flies back into his homeland.

  Khalil Gibran

  Wings, Bird, Excellence

  11 Copy quote

• Poetry is to philosophy what the Sabbath is to the rest of the week.

  Augustus William Hare

  Philosophy, Week, Sabbath

  Julius Charles HARE (Archdeacon of Lewes. and HARE (Augustus William)), Augustus William HARE (1847). “Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers. Third edition. First Series”, p.14

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• If Rilke cut himself shaving, he would bleed poetry.

  Stephen Spender

  Cutting, Shaving, Ifs

  8 Copy quote

• Poetry is a means of redemption.

  Wallace Stevens

  Mean, Redemption, Poetry Is

  1957 Opus Posthumous, Aphorisms,'Adagia'.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Poetry must be as well written as prose.

  Ezra Pound

  Wells, Prose, Written

  Letter to Harriet Monroe, Jan. 1915

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The freedom of poetic license.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Freedom, Poetic License, Poetic

  "Pro Publio Sestio". Oration by Marcus Tullius Cicero (Section 6), 56 BC.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• POETRY, n. A form of expression peculiar to the Land beyond the Magazines.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Expression, Land, Peculiar

  Ambrose Bierce (2016). “The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World”, p.166, 谷月社

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Every old poem is sacred.

  Horace

  Art, Sacred

  7 Copy quote

• Prose is when all the lines except the last go on to the end. Poetry is when some of them fall short of it.

  Jeremy Bentham

  Fall, Goes On, Lines

  In M. St. J. Packe 'The Life of John Stuart Mill' (1954) bk. 1, ch. 2

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The man of science is nothing if not a poet gone wrong.

  George Meredith

  Men, Gone, He Man

  7 Copy quote

• I got $30 from Nation magazine for a poem and $500 for my first book of poems.

  Jim Harrison

  Book, Magazines, Literature

  7 Copy quote

• The poem, for me, is simply the first sound realized in the modality of being.

  Charles Olson

  Sound, Firsts

  Charles Olson (1979). “Muthologos: the collected lectures & interviews”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I am always pleased to be asked to write a poem.

  Carol Ann Duffy

  Writing

  7 Copy quote