Quotes About Literature

I never really read Allen Ginsberg poetry, even though I have a book he gave me.

The idea that a student can write a sonnet or a novel without having a sound understanding about its history, and where it fits into literature as a whole, seems to me to be manifestly daft.

Literature is always something - it is either story or poetry, ideally both. That is, you always know what it is and even if the interpretation is not available, the experience of language is.

For whatever reason, people, including very well-educated people or people otherwise interested in reading, do not read poetry

I allow no hot-beds in the gardens of Parnassus.

I am a self-appointed ambassador for poetry.

Prose and poetry are as different as food and drink.

Though we do not have many poets, we certainly have more than we deserve, for we deserve none at all. It is ourselves that we are hurting by our stupidity and ignorance of poetry.

I never really liked "cool" books. I plowed through as much Borges and Joyce as possible, read the first half of V. and spent whole Bar Mitzvah checks on Beat poetry.

I hate French poetry. What measured glitter!

One can be well-bred and write bad poetry

I taught myself Russian, which was very, very useful, especially for poetry and in fact if you can't read Pushkin in Russian, you're really missing something.

I think that if poetry is not a personal act, it's a pamphlet.

For me, the measure of a poem is the word, not the line.

Our best history is still poetry.

I don't write poetry for the New Yorker. My poems appear in the Nation, mostly.

Old-fashioned poetry, but choicely good.

I think it's true that that's something that poetry can go to school on fiction. I think poetry can go to fiction to learn.

There is no access to contemporary poetry in the libraries.

Most of humanity gets by without reading novels or poetry, and no one would deny the richness of their thoughts.

In high school I was drawn to the study of literature, poetry Shakespeare, contemporary fiction, drama, you name it - I read it.

I never had much education in English poetry as such.

Ultimately I have learned more about poetry, from music and magic than from literature.

Americans are not brought up with meter. They're not brought up with poetry. If you try to get them to recite, they're too embarrassed.