Quotes About Meaning

Poetry is at least an elegance and at most a revelation.

Poetry is either language lit up by life or life lit up by language

To delight the ear and the eye is a mere sensual indulgence;—true poetry strikes at the soul.

Not all poetry wants to be storytelling. And not all storytelling wants to be poetry. But great storytellers and great poets share something in common: They had something to say, and did.

Poetry is the art of saying what you mean but disguising it.

Sometimes my poetry is an attempt to keep off existential terror; sometimes it is a grappling with philosophical problems; sometimes just fun.

Only one thing remained reachable, close and secure amid all losses: language. Yes, language. In spite of everything, it remained secure against loss.

Poetry is what is gained in translation.

It seems just possible that a poem might happen to a very young man: but a poem is not poetry -That is a life.

Poetry must be capable of answering the challenge of apocalytpic times, even if this means sounding apocaltypic.

Poetry is a language pared down to its essentials.

Poetry is life distilled.

Poetry is what is lost in translation. It is also what is lost in interpretation.

Poetry reveals that there is no empty space.

...if you do not even understand what words say, how can you expect to pass judgement on what words conceal?

My research is like my feeling directed towards what is the principal value in the life, the poetry.

It is never what a poem says that matters, but what it is.

Poetry: the best words in the best order.

A poem is really a kind of machine for producing the poetic state by means of words.

Sometimes poetry, it is incomprehensible. But we need incomprehensible stuff! It is very healthy to talk about incomprehensible things! It is very healthy! We need it!

Poetry often enters through the window of irrelevance.

First of all, the art of living; then as my ideal profession, poetry and philosophy, and as my real profession, plastic arts; in the last resort, for lack of income, illustrations.

Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.

Words are always getting conventionalized to some secondary meaning. It is one of the works of poetry to take the truants in custody and bring them back to their right senses.