quotations about poetry
Poetry (by extension, any art) is a response, it is part of a conversation between the writer and the larger world--and just writing that I realize how much our writing is a form of listening. And we have a response-ability that can grow, shift, change as we do over the years.
SARAH SADIE
"On Poetry: A Conversation", Patheos, April 30, 2016
Poetry is art, but poetry contests are sport, bound by rules as exacting as any that govern collegiate competition.
ZUSHA ELINSON
"Poetry Is Art, but Poetry Slams Are Sport, Bound by Pages of Rules", Wall Street Journal, April 8, 2016
Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.
PLATO
Ion
Poetry might be defined as the clear expression of mixed feelings.
W. H. AUDEN
New Year Letter
Some people pretend they never were in love and never wrote poetry; two weaknesses which they dare not own -- one of the heart, the other of the mind.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of the Affections", Les Caractères
The permanent passions of mankind--love, religion, patriotism, humanitarianism, hate, revenge, ambition; the conflict between free will and fate; the rise and fall of empires--these are all great themes, and, if greatly treated, and in accordance with the essentials applicable to all poetry, may produce poetry of the loftiest kind.
ALFRED AUSTIN
The Bridling of Pegasus
The poet's is the highest type of character: other men dwell in the conventional--he chiefly abides in the universal.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
There has never been a great poet who wasn't also a great reader of poetry.
EDWARD HIRSCH
interview, 2007
There is no true poet in whom fancy is not close akin to faith.
JOHN C. BAILEY
The Claims of French Poetry
You speak
As one who fed on poetry.
EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON
Richelieu
For verses and poems I can turn to true food.
ST. AUGUSTINE
Confessions
I think that believing in language -- in the ability of words to bring even an imagined reality into being -- is a big part of what it means to write poetry. If something like an idea or a belief is capable of being imagined or even described, then the possibility that it will be acted upon becomes much more likely. I think that many of my poems are attempts to take myself up on that premise, to step into conversation with voices and events that require me to decide something: what do I believe is right? What is the more subtle or subjective view of this situation? What must I challenge myself to understand?
TRACY K. SMITH
interview, Ploughshares Literary Magazine, May 30, 2012
No verse which is unmusical or obscure can be regarded as poetry whatever other qualities it may possess.
ALFRED AUSTIN
The Bridling of Pegasus: Prose Papers on Poetry
Poetry is simply the most beautiful, impressive and wisely effective mode of saying things, and hence its importance.
MATTHEW ARNOLD
"Heinrich Heine", Essays in Criticism, First Series
Poetry is the one thing that isn't contaminated, the one thing that isn't part of the game.
ROBERTO BOLAÑO
2666
Poetry never loses its appeal. Sometimes its audience wanes and sometimes it swells like a wave. But the essential mystery of being human is always going to engage and compel us. We're involved in a mystery. Poetry uses words to put us in touch with that mystery. We're always going to need it.
EDWARD HIRSCH
interview, 2007
Some poems are like the Centaurs--a mingling of man and beast, and begotten of Ixion on a cloud.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
Table-Talk
When an exquisite poem brings one's eyes to the point of tears, those tears are not evidence of an excess of joy, they are witness far more to an exacerbated melancholy, a disposition of the nerves, a nature exiled among imperfect things, which would like to possess, without delay, a paradise revealed on this very same earth.
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
"Notes nouvelles sur Edgar Poe III", L'art romantique
Babies are not brought by storks, and poets are not produced by workshops.
JAMES FENTON
Ronald Duncan Lecture, 1992
Here! is this you on the top of Fan-ko Mountain,
Wearing a huge hat in the noon-day sun?
How thin, how wretchedly thin, you have grown!
You must have been suffering from poetry again.
LI BAI
"Addressed Humorously to Tu Fu"