Quotes About Meaning

Naming a baby is an act of poetry, for many people the only creative moment of their lives.

One of the most powerful devices of poetry is the use of distortions. You can go from talking about the way a minute passes to the way a century passes, or a lifetime.

It's not easy to define poetry.

The importance of poetry is not measured, finally, by what the poet says but by how he says it.

Poetry is indispensable - if I only knew what for.

For me, poetry is always a search for order.

I believe that poetry should communicate.

What has always attracted me in life is poetry. Any genre can have poetry. For me, poetry contains truth.

I cannot say I'm a poet. That's for someone when they take in consideration where they can bestow 'poet' on. I can't do it. But I would be disingenuous if I didn't say that my intention is poetry.

But poetry is my life. Poetry is what matters to me.

There are so many things that poetry is about, one of which is memory.

To know anything of a poet but his poetry is, so far as the poetry is concerned, to know something that may be entertaining, even delightful, but is certainly inessential.

In fact a lot of them I think are absolute baloney. Those Charles Olsens and people like that. At first I was interested in seeing what they were up to, what they were doing, why they were doing it. They never moved me in the way that one is moved by true poetry.

Poets are seen as the caretakers of language, so working with words no matter what the form is what we do.

Don't call my lyrics poetry. It's an insult to real poets.

The Language Poets are writing only about language itself. The Ashbery poets are writing only about poetry itself. That seems to me a kind of dead end.

I think that's what poets try to do: They try to sidestep neurology and go straight to meaning.

For me, music is about expressing the inexpressible, and as I get older, man, what I feel the need to express becomes less and less poignant to others.

I was always more interested in story songs, things with a point of view... and things that informed me.

You don't want to make a movie just to make a movie. You better have a point of view.

Every day, I get up, and I fill the bird feeders and put out fruit and other food for both the birds and any passing mammals. Is that pointless long-term? I have no idea. All I know is that on this day, in this moment, it makes a difference.

'Happiness' is a pointless goal.

I am not afraid of death, but would not want to die in some obscure or pointless way.

I want people to hear what I have to say, and I want to be able to get a lot of points across.