Poetry Quotes - Page 4

• I think of poets as outlaw visionaries in a way.

  Jim Jarmusch

  Thinking, Visionaries, Way

  The Guardian Interview, www.theguardian.com. November 15, 199.

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• There is as much difference between good poetry and fine verses, as between the smell of a flower-garden and of a perfumer's shop.

  Augustus William Hare

  Flower, Garden, Smell

  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.199

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• If Painting be Poetry's sister, she can only be a sister Anne, who will see nothing but a flock of sheep, while the other bodies forth a troop of dragoons with drawn sabres and white-plumed helmets.

  Augustus William Hare

  Sheep, White, Body

  Augustus William Hare (1827). “Guesses at Truth”, p.243

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• Sad is his lot, who, once at least in his life, has not been a poet.

  Alphonse de Lamartine

  Poet

  Alphonse de Lamartine (1854). “Memoirs of celebrated characters”, p.341

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• Not gods, nor men, nor even booksellers have put up with poets' being second-rate.

  Horace

  Men, Rate, Booksellers

  'Ars Poetica' l. 372

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• I have to submit to much in order to pacify the touchy tribe of poets.

  Horace

  Order, Tribes, Submit

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• Modern poets add a lot of water to their ink.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Water, Ink, Add

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, W. B. Rönnfeldt (1898*). “Goethe's Criticisms, Reflections, and Maxims”

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• A poet wants only one small stone on which to carve his life.

  Joan Walsh Anglund

  Want, Stones, Poet

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• Poetry is when you talk to yourself.

  William Hughes Mearns

  Poetry Is

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• The true poet dreams being awake.

  Charles Lamb

  Dream, Poet, Awake

  Charles Lamb (1835). “Essays of Elia”, p.206

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• These poems are a mental sketch as formed / Passage by passage of light and shade / Maintained and preserved to this point / Brought together in paper and mineral ink

  Kenji Miyazawa

  Light, Together, Ink

  Kenji Miyazawa (2007). “Strong in the Rain: Selected Poems”, Bloodaxe Books Limited

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• Poetry's role is to provide spontaneous individual candor as distinct from manipulation and brainwash.

  Allen Ginsberg

  Roles, Manipulation, Spontaneous

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• Writing poetry, we live among the wild beasts, and when we touch a man, the stuff of someone in whom we believed, and he goes to pieces like a rotten pie, you... gather together whatever can be salvaged, while I cup my hands around the live coal of life.

  Pablo Neruda

  Writing, Men, Hands

  Milton Rogovin, Pablo Neruda, Dennis Maloney, Robert Bly (1984). “Windows that open inward: images of Chile”, White Pine Pr

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• There are poets and there are grownups.

  Jean Cocteau

  Poet, Grownups

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• Poetry is to a painting what life is to man.

  Georges Braque

  Men, Painting, Life Is

  Georges Braque (1964). “Georges Braque, 1882-1963: An American Tribute”

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• All pasts are like poems; one can derive a thousand things, but not live in them.

  John Fowles

  Past, Thousand

  John Fowles, Barry Brukoff (1980). “The Enigma of Stonehenge”, Simon & Schuster

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• Why do you always write poetry? Why do you not write prose? Prose is so much more difficult.

  Walter Pater

  Writing, Difficult, Prose

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• Literary poetry in a painter is something special, and is neither illustration nor the translation of writing by form.

  Paul Gauguin

  Writing, Illustration, Special

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• Every authentic poem contributes to the labour of poetry... to bring together what life has separated or violence has torn apart.

  John Berger

  Together, Torn Apart, Violence

  John Berger (2008). “Selected Essays of John Berger”, p.705, Vintage

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• Terrible times in which priests no longer merit the praise of poets and in which poets have not yet begun to be priests.

  Jose Marti

  Merit, Praise, Terrible Times

  Jose Marti's remarks on "El Poema de Niágara" of Pérez Bonalde, 1883.

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• I am not a painter. I am a poet. / Why? I think I would rather be / a painter, but I am not.

  Frank O'Hara

  Thinking, Poet, Painter

  Frank O'Hara (1995). “The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara”, p.261, Univ of California Press

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• The poets are the standard bearers of language. Their work lives or dies word by word. When I write and can hear a clunky sentence, I try to write up to the poetry that I have recited beforehand.

  Janet Fitch

  Writing, Trying, Language

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• A truly poetic canvas is an awakened dream.

  Rene Magritte

  Dream, Canvas, Poetic

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• Poetry today is easier to write but harder to remember.

  Stanley Kunitz

  Writing, Today, Remember

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• Poetry is an act of peace.

  Pablo Neruda

  Poetry Is

  Pablo Neruda (1977). “Memoirs”

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