Poetry Quotes - Page 34

• 'Who's been repeating all that hard stuff to you?' 'I read it in a book,' said Alice. 'But I had some poetry repeated to me, much easier than that, by - Tweedledee, I think it was.' 'As to poetry, you know,' said Humpty Dumpty, stretching out one of his great hands, 'I can repeat poetry as well as other folk, if it comes to that - ' 'Oh, it needn't come to that!' Alice hastily said, hoping to keep him from beginning.

  Lewis Carroll

  Book, Thinking, Hands

  'Through the Looking-Glass' (1872) ch. 6

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• For what I have publish'd, I can only hope to be pardon'd; but for what I have burned, I deserve to be prais'd.

  Alexander Pope

  Pardon, Burned, Publish

  Alexander Pope (1961). “The Poems”

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• One doesn't read poetry while thinking of other things.

  Gaston Bachelard

  Thinking, Thinking Of Others

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• I wanted a line in a poem to be the hollow ney of the dervish orchestra whose plaintive wail is a call to God. But all I achieved was awkward shrieking. Not even the pure shriek of a reed in the rain.

  Anne Michaels

  Rain, Awkward, Orchestra

  Anne Michaels (2010). “Fugitive Pieces”, p.112, Emblem Editions

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• Poetry has never been a favorite American pastime.

  Natalie Goldberg

  Pastime

  Natalie Goldberg (2016). “Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within”, p.75, Shambhala Publications

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• Fourier is a mathematical poem.

  Lord Kelvin

  Math, Fourier, Mathematics

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• If a poet interprets a poem of his own he limits its suggestibility.

  William Butler Yeats

  Limits, Poet, Ifs

  Alexander Norman Jeffares, William Butler Yeats (1984). “A New Commentary on the Poems of W.B. Yeats”, Palgrave Schol, Print UK

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• Adjectives are the potbelly of poetry.

  W. H. Auden

  Adjectives

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• Poetry, even that of the loftiest, and seemingly, that of the wildest odes, [has] a logic of its own as severe as that of science; and more difficult, because more subtle, more complex, and dependent on more and more fugitive causes. In the truly great poets... there is a reason assignable, not only for every word, but for the position of every word.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Odes, Causes, Logic

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge, James Engell, Walter Jackson Bate (1984). “Biographia Literaria, Or, Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions”, p.9, Princeton University Press

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• Sir, what is poetry? Why, Sir, it is much easier to say what it is not. We all know what light is; but it is not easy to tell what it is.

  Samuel Johnson

  Light, Easy, Easier

  In James Boswell 'The Life of Samuel Johnson' (1791) vol. 3, p. 38 (12 April 1776)

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• Poetry is so vital to us until school spoils it.

  Russell Baker

  School, Poetry Is, Spoil

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• Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting. . . . Read it a hundred times; it will forever keep its freshness as a metal keeps its fragrance. It can never lose its sense of a meaning that once unfolded by surprise as it went.

  Robert Frost

  Ice, Forever, Hot

  Robert Frost, Mark Richardson (2007). “The Collected Prose of Robert Frost”, p.133, Harvard University Press

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• All poetry is difficult to read - The sense of it anyhow.

  Robert Browning

  Difficult, Difficulty, Poetry Is

  Robert Browning (1956). “Poems”, Boston

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• It is what man does not know of God Composes the visible poem of the world.

  Richard Eberhart

  Men, Doe, World

  Richard Eberhart (1979). “Of Poetry and Poets”, Urbana : University of Illinois Press

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• Regarding R. H. Blyth: Blyth is sometimes perilous, naturally, since he's a high-handed old poem himself, but he's also sublime - and who goes to poetry for safety anyway.

  Reginald Horace Blyth

  Safety, Sublime, Sometimes

  Reginald Horace Blyth (1995). “The genius of haiku: readings from R.H. Blyth on poetry, life, and Zen”

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• Only poetry inspires poetry.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Inspire

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1871). “Society and Solitude and Other Essays”, p.171

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• The only gift is a portion of thyself . . . the poet brings his poem; the shepherd his lamb. . . .

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Shepherds, Lambs, Portions

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2004). “A Dream Too Wild: Emerson Meditations for Every Day of the Year”, Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations

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• Peitaho Heavy rains fall on Yuyen, the northland kingdom of swallows. White pages of rain envelop the sky, and fishing boats off the Island of the Emperor Chin disappear on the ocean. Which way have they gone? More than a thousand years ago the mighty emperor Tsao Tsao cracked his whip and drove his army against the Tartars. He left us a poem: "Let us move east to the Stone Mountains." Today we still shiver in the autumn gale, in desolate winds, yet another man is in the world.

  Mao Zedong

  Rain, Ocean, Moving

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• Poem for Liu Ya-tzu I cannot forget how in Canton we drank tea and in Chungking went over our poems when leaves were yellowing. Thirty-one years ago and now we come back at last to the ancient capital Peking. In this season of falling flowers I read your beautiful poems. Be careful not to be torn inside. Open your vision to the world. Don't say that waters of Kumming Lake are too shallow. We can watch fish better here than in the Fuchun River in the south.

  Mao Zedong

  Beautiful, Flower, Fall

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• "Glorious, stirring sight!" murmured Toad. . . . "The poetry of motion! The real way to travel! The only way to travel! Here today - in next week tomorrow! Villages skipped, towns and cities jumped- always somebody else's horizons! O bliss! O poop-poop! O my! O my!"

  Kenneth Grahame

  Real, Sight, Next Week

  'The Wind in the Willows' (1908) ch. 2.

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• For wheresoe'er I turn my ravish'd eyes, Gay gilded scenes and shining prospects rise, Poetic fields encompass me around, And still I seem to tread on classic ground.

  Joseph Addison

  Eye, Gay, Shining

  'Letter from Italy' (1704)

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• Every great man exhibits the talent of organization or construction, whether it be in a poem, a philosophical system, a policy, or a strategy. And without method there is no organization nor construction.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Philosophical, Men, Organization

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• Zen Makes use, to a great extent, of poetical expressions; Zen is wedded to poetry.

  D.T. Suzuki

  Expression, Use

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• The five excellences include: calligraphy, painting, poetry, medicine, and t'ai chi chuan.

  Cheng Man-ch'ing

  Medicine, Excellence, Calligraphy

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• The poetry from the eighteenth century was prose; the prose from the seventeenth century was poetry.

  David Hare

  Century, Prose

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