Quotes About Influence

Poetry, with all its obscurity, has a more general as well as a more powerful dominion over the passions than the art of painting.

But I can only write what the muse allows me to write. I cannot choose, I can only do what I am given, and I feel pleased when I feel close to concrete poetry - still.

My songs were influenced not so much by poetry on the page but by poetry being recited by the poets who recited poems with jazz bands.

Poetry can only be made out of other poems; novels out of other novels.

There were poets before Homer.

Auden said poetry makes nothing happen. But I wonder if the opposite could be true. It could make something happen.

I do not write for the public. You are my public and I hope to convert you.

My wife has been my greatest earthly inspiration. She excels in eloquence, the poetry of words, empathy and graciousness.

Who are you, a hundred years from today, reading my poetry with curiosity?

Great Music, it said, and Great Poetry would like quieten Modern Youth down and make Modern Youth more Civilized. Civilized my syphilised yarbles.

I have always loved American poetry, which is very different from Irish poetry.

One cannot simply decide to write apolitical poetry, in the way one decides to drink lemonade instead of tea, it's far more subliminal than that.

Poetry teaches the enormous force of a few words, and, in proportion to the inspiration, checks loquacity.

If I could get that girl [Courtney Love] to publish her poetry, the world would change.

Our most famous writers are Faulkner and Eudora Welty and Flannery O'Connor. It would make sense that the poetry would reflect some of those same values, some of the same techniques.

I have had much to learn from Sweden's poetry and, more especially, from her lyrics of the last generation.

Can poetry be a form of social change? I don't know the answer to that. I do think art can have a social impact even if it may be difficult to see the effects of that impact, to assess or measure it.

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.

My style of performance poetry came from the beatniks, Allen Ginsberg.

Hopefully I can inspire lots of people to learn about [Patti Smith], to read poetry or learn about William Blake or Arthur Rimbaud.

I think poetry can lead to policy, and I can hear the laughter when I say that.

You should check out William Shatner's album The Transformed Man. It will alter the way you hear poetry forever. And not in a good way.

My father had wanted to name me for Dylan Thomas. He had seen him speak on one of those drunken poetry tours he did.

All poetry is political, to some degree.