quotations about poetry
We hate poetry that has a palpable design upon us -- and if we do not agree, seems to put its hand in its breeches pocket. Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not startle or amaze with itself, but with its subject.
JOHN KEATS
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letter to John Hamilton Reynolds, February 3, 1818
I want to be a poet, from head to toe, living and dying by poetry.
FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA
letter to Melchor Fernandez Almagro, February 1926
For a genre of literature that is supposedly dead, poetry provides some of the most quoted material in the history of quotes.
STAFF EDITORIAL
The Nevada Sagebrush, April 12, 2016
There is a widespread notion in the public mind that poetic inspiration has something mysterious and translunar about it, something which altogether escapes human analysis, which it would be almost sacrilege for analysis to touch. The Romans spoke of the poet's divine afflatus, the Elizabethans of his fine frenzy. And even in our own day critics, and poets themselves, are not lacking who take the affair quite as seriously. Our critics and poets are themselves largely responsible for this -- they are a sentimental lot, even when most discerning, and cannot help indulging, on the one hand, in a reverential attitude toward the art, and, on the other, in a reverential attitude toward themselves.
CONRAD AIKEN
Scepticisms: Notes on Contemporary Poetry
Poetry is a serious business; literature is the apparatus through which the world tries to keep intact its important ideas and feelings.
MARY OLIVER
A Poetry Handbook
Poets are always taking the weather so personally. They're always sticking their emotions in things that have no emotions.
J. D. SALINGER
"Teddy"
Poets' food is love and fame.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
"An Exhortation"
Yes, I read. I have that absurd habit. I like beautiful poems, moving poetry, and all the beyond of that poetry. I am extraordinarily sensitive to those poor, marvelous words left in our dark night by a few men I never knew.
LOUIS ARAGON
Treatise on Style
Poetry has the power to turn words into darts that shoot under your skin.
PENNY ASHTON
"Poetry Idol's organiser is shocked and saddened to learn that slam poetry is 'dumb-ass and not good'", The Spinoff, April 28, 2016
The most generous critic, if he is to be discriminating and just, cannot, let me say again, allow that any verse which is profoundly obscure or utterly unmusical, no matter how intellectual in substance, deserves the appellation of poetry.
ALFRED AUSTIN
The Bridling of Pegasus
The tragic element in poetry is like Saturn in alchemy, -- the Malevolent, the Destroyer of Nature; but without it no true Aurum Potabile, or Elixir of Life, can be made.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
Table-Talk
Once I started writing all the time and interacting with poets, I made a conscious decision to identify myself as a poet. It's funny how much a single word can provide focus and direction. As soon as I claimed that identity, I started clearing more and more space for poetry in my life and applying poetic tools to other areas of my life. The world became a different place, and I witnessed it through different kinds of eyes.
TRACY K. SMITH
interview, Gulf Coast, vol. 17, number 1
Poetry is one of the ancient arts, and it began, as did all the fine arts, within the original wilderness of the earth. Also, it began through the process of seeing, and feeling, and hearing, and smelling, and touching, and then remembering--I mean remembering in words--what these perceptual experiences were like, while trying to describe the endless invisible fears and desires of our inner lives.
MARY OLIVER
A Poetry Handbook
If Poetry comes not as naturally as Leaves to a tree it had better not come at all.
JOHN KEATS
letter to John Taylor, February 27, 1818
Out on the foolish phrase, but there's a hard rhyming without it.
ROBERT BROWNING
letter to Elizabeth Barrett, February 26, 1845
Poetry can be a really great outlet for kids and teens. There are so many rules when you're a teen, but writing poetry is totally open-ended. It's a great way for kids and teens to talk about their feelings and what's going on with no rules. Whatever comes out, comes out.
ELISSA DICKSON
"Elissa Dickson is new San Miguel County Poet Laureate", The Daily Planet, May 4, 2016
Sculpture and painting are moments of life; poetry is life itself.
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
Pericles and Aspasia
Poetry as religion -- I'll drink to that! For me it is a sacred vocation, and one that no one can take away from me. One is a witch in community, one has a job title conferred by an employer: but one can be a poet without approval or sanction from anyone else. Even a child writing their first poems may call themselves a poet. I love that.
YVONNE ABURROW
"On Poetry: A Conversation", Patheos, April 30, 2016
Rhyme is the rock on which thou art to wreck,
'Tis fatal to thy fame and to thy neck.
JOHN DRYDEN
Abaslom and Achitophel
It is a test (a positive test, I do not assert that it is always valid negatively), that genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.
T. S. ELIOT
"Dante"