Poetry Quotes - Page 9

• I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering.

  Robert Frost

  Powerful, Writing, Curiosity

  1955 In the NewYork Times, 7 Nov.

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• If you read quickly to get through a poem to what it means, you have missed the body of the poem.

  M. H. Abrams

  Mean, Body, Reading Books

  "Honored literary scholar M.H. Abrams continues his labors (of love)". Interview with Linda Grace-Kobas, news.cornell.edu. June 11, 1999.

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• Modesty, tis a virtue not often found among poets, for almost every one of them thinks himself the greatest in the world.

  Miguel de Cervantes

  Thinking, Literature, World

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• A poet is someone who stands outside in the rain hoping to be struck by lightning.

  James Dickey

  Rain, Lightning, Poetic

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Every single soul is a poem.

  Michael Franti

  Soul, Single Relationship

  Song: Every single soul

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• As for the usefulness of poetry, its uses are many. It is the deification of reality.

  Edith Sitwell

  Art, Reality, Poetry Is

  "Young Poets". Edith Sitwell's lecture (1957); later published in "Mightier Than the Sword: The P.E.N. Hermon Ould Memorial Lectures, 1953-1961" (p. 56), 1964.

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• We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.

  William Butler Yeats

  Argument, Quarrels, Rhetoric

  "Anima Hominis" (1924)

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• There is something about poetry beyond prose logic, there is mystery in it, not to be explained but admired.

  Edward Young

  Literature, Logic, Mystery

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• I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.

  Oscar Wilde

  Morning, Writing, Perfection

  Oscar Wilde (2007). “Epigrams of Oscar Wilde”, p.225, Wordsworth Editions

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• In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Men, Sea, Rivers

  "Kubla Khan" l. 1 (1816)

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• Every Night and every Morn Some to Misery are born. Every Morn and every Night Some are born to Sweet Delight, Some are born to Endless Night.

  William Blake

  Baby, Sweet, Night

  The Complete Writings of William Blake Poems from the Pickering Manuscript Auguries of Innocence, l. 119-21

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• I've given offense by saying I'd as soon write free verse as play tennis with the net down.

  Robert Frost

  Writing, Play, Tennis

  In Edward Lathem 'Interviews with Robert Frost' (1966) p. 203

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• Write a thousand words a day and in three years you'll be a writer!

  Ray Bradbury

  Writing, Years, Three

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• Happiness. It comes on unexpectedly. And goes beyond, really, any early morning talk about it.

  Raymond Carver

  Morning, Early Morning

  Raymond Carver (2015). “Where Water Comes Together with Other Water: Poems”, p.29, Vintage

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• The true poem rests between the words.

  Vanna Bonta

  "Shades of the World". Book by Vanna Bonta, 1985.

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• Poetry is a game of loser-take-all.

  Jean-Luc Godard

  Games, Loser, Poetry Is

  "Pierrot le Fou". www.imdb.com. 1965.

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• No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else's draft.

  H. G. Wells

  Passion, Writing, Editing

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• All the world can be found in poetry. All you need to see and hear. All the moments, good and bad, joyous and sad.

  Patricia MacLachlan

  Needs, World, Moments

  Patricia Maclachlan (2009). “Baby”, p.61, Yearling

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• To be a poet is a condition, not a profession.

  Robert Frost

  Love, Life, Motivational

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• Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason.

  Novalis

  Inspiring, Healing, Poetic

  "Quote, Unquote". Book by Jonathan Williams, p. 136, 1989.

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• A poet can survive everything but a misprint.

  Oscar Wilde

  Funny, Life, Witty

  Oscar Wilde (2016). “Reviews”, p.121, Oscar Wilde

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• Poetry is the journal of a sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air.

  Carl Sandburg

  Writing, Animal, Air

  Carl Sandburg (2003). “The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg”, p.317, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Publishing a volume of verse is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo.

  Don Marquis

  Education, Learning, Knowledge

  Don Marquis, William McCollum (1982). “Selected letters of Don Marquis”, Northwoods Pr

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• Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting.

  Robert Frost

  Art, Philosophy, Writing

  Collected Poems (1939) "Figure a Poem Makes"

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• They say poets write mostly for themselves; if anyone else likes it, well and good, if not, it doesn't matter; certainly, not to me.

  Tom Glazer

  Writing, Matter, Likes

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