Poetry Quotes - Page 32

• Poetry is only secondarily about words. Primarily, it is about truth. I dealt with the Ding an Sich, the substance behind the shadow, weaving powerful concepts, similes, and connections the way an engineer would raise a skyscraper with the whiskered-alloy skeleton being constructed long before the glass and plastic and chromaluminum appears.

  Dan Simmons

  Truth, Powerful, Skeletons

  Dan Simmons (2014). “The Hyperion Cantos 4-Book Bundle: Hyperion, The Fall of Hyperion, Endymion, The Rise of Endymion”, p.239, Spectra

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• The reverie we intend to study is poetic reverie. This is a reverie which poetry puts on the right track, the track an expanding consciousness follows. This reverie is written, or, at least, promises to be written. It is already facing the great universe of the blank page. Then images begin to compose and fall into place.

  Gaston Bachelard

  Fall, Track, Promise

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• All the senses awaken and fall into harmony in poetic reverie. Poetic reverie listens to this polyphony of the senses, and the poetic consciousness must record it.

  Gaston Bachelard

  Fall, Records, Poetic

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• A vein of poetry exists in the hearts of all men.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Heart, Men, Veins

  Thomas Carlyle (2014). “The Selected Works of Thomas Carlyle”, p.147, Lulu.com

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• A lady with whom I was riding in the forest said to me that the woods always seemed to her to wait, as if the genii who inhabit them suspend their deeds until the wayfarer had passed onward; a thought which poetry has celebrated in the dance of the fairies, which breaks off on the approach of human feet.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Feet, Break Off, Waiting

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Mikics (2012). “The Annotated Emerson”, p.147, Harvard University Press

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• Fax me a fact and I'll telegram a hologram or telephone the son of man and tell him he is done. Leave a message on his answering machine telling him there are none. God and I are one. Times moon. Times star. Times sun. The factor is me. You remember me.

  Saul Williams

  Stars, Son, Moon

  Saul Williams (2006). “The Dead Emcee Scrolls: The Lost Teachings of Hip-Hop”, p.65, Simon and Schuster

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• INCOMPOSSIBLE, adj. Unable to exist if something else exists. Two things are incompossible when the world of being has scope enough for one of them, but not enough for both - as Walt Whitman's poetry and God's mercy to man.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Men, Two, World

  Ambrose Bierce (2016). “The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World”, p.104, 谷月社

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• All the translations of a poem in all possible languages may add nuance to nuance and, by a kind of mutual retouching, by correcting one another, may give an increasingly faithful picture of the poem they translate, yet they will never give the inner meaning of the original.

  Henri Bergson

  Faith, Giving, Add

  Henri Bergson (1961). “Introduction to metaphysics”

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• Poetry must be as new as foam and as old as the rock.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, Philosophy, Rocks

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ralph H. Orth, Glen M. Johnson (1994). “The Topical Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.184, University of Missouri Press

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• The productions of all arts are kinds of poetry and their craftsmen are all poets.

  Plato

  Art, Kind, Craftsman

  Plato (1961). “Plato, with an English translation”

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• Any time is the time to make a poem.

  Gertrude Stein

  Gertrude Stein (2013). “Everybody's Autobiography”, p.162, Vintage

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• We all scribble poetry.

  Homer

  Scribbles

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• The genius of poetry must work out its own salvation in a man; it cannot be matured by law and precept, but by sensation and watchfulness in itself. That which is creative must create itself.

  John Keats

  Men, Law, Work Out

  John Keats (2015). “John Keats - The Man Behind The Lyrics: Life, letters, and literary remains: Complete Letters and Two Extensive Biographies of one of the most beloved English Romantic poets”, p.226, e-artnow

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• The purpose of poetry is to make life complete in itself.

  Wallace Stevens

  Purpose, Poetry Is

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “Opus Posthumous: Poems, Plays, Prose”, p.243, Vintage

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• A poet's job is to find a name for everything: to be a fearless finder of the names of things.

  Jane Kenyon

  Jobs, Names, Fearless

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• Ultimately I have learned more about poetry, from music and magic than from literature.

  James Broughton

  Magic, Literature, I Have Learned

  James Broughton (1990). “Special deliveries: new and selected poems”, Broken Moon Pr

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• And all poets love dust and mist because all the last answers. Go running back to dust and mist.

  Carl Sandburg

  Running, Dust, Answers

  Carl Sandburg, Frances Schoonmaker Bolin (1995). “Carl Sandburg”, p.12, Sterling Publishing Company, Inc.

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• The poets are almost always wrong about the facts... That's because they are not really interested in facts: only in truth...

  William Faulkner

  Facts, Not Interested, Always Wrong

  "The Town" by William Faulkner, (Ch. 5), 1957.

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• The poet's first job of work is to put bread on the table.

  Yvor Winters

  Jobs, Tables, Bread

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• Poetry, like dreams, will eventually break through every person's consciousness, even the tightest iconoclast's.

  Sheila Bender

  Dream, Break Through, Consciousness

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• The poet is the one who breaks through our habits.

  Saint-John Perse

  Break Through, Habit, Poet

  Saint-John Perse, Luigi Pirandello, Henrik Pontoppidan, Salvatore Quasimodo (1971). “St.-John Perse, Luigi Pirandello, Henrik Pontoppidan, Salvatore Quasimodo”

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• The poet makes silk dresses out of worms.

  Wallace Stevens

  Dresses, Worms, Silk

  1957 Opus Posthumous, Aphorisms,'Adagia'.

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• There is no question that the language of "felt thought" must be quarried from our personal depths. Like the best gold, it does not lie on the surface.

  Jacques Maritain

  Lying, Gold, Depth

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• The meaning of poetry has no sureness of direction; is like the sling, it is not under control.

  Rumi

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• Memory exercised in a particular way is a natural gift of poetic genius. The poet above all else, is a person who never forgets certain sense impressions which he has experienced and which he can relive again as though with all their original freshness.

  Stephen Spender

  Memories, Genius, Way

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