Quotes About Creativity

I think we got much better poetry when it was all regarded as sinful or subversive, and you had to hide it under the cushion when somebody came in.

The truest poetry is the most feigning.

By poetry we mean the art of employing of words in such a manner as to produce an illusion on the imagination; the art of doing by means of words, what the painter does by means of colors.

I've learned about marrying poetry and prose and making both accessible.

Public toilets have a duty to be accessible, poetry does not.

For me, poetry is a way of thinking, and like many poets, I'm driven by the idea of trying to find the impossible, perfect words: the words that will hold my subject.

I used to do poetry and write stories and stuff - I never really had anybody standing over my shoulder, like, "What did you write? Let me hear it." I hate that type of stuff.

Images are the heart of poetry ... You're not a poet without imagery.

They say poets write mostly for themselves; if anyone else likes it, well and good, if not, it doesn't matter; certainly, not to me.

A perfect poem is impossible. Once it had been written, the world would end. Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.

Poetry, I feel, is a tyrannical discipline. You've got to go so far, so fast, in such a small space, that you've got to burn away all the peripherals.

Those who are not very concerned with art want poems or pictures to record for them something they already know - as one might want a picture of a place he loves.

I like poems you can tack all over with a hammer and there are no hollow places.

You have to give your art everything you can - I don't mean only writing, but studying other poets and poetics, thinking, reading what poets have written other than their poetry.

For a poet to depict a poet in poetry is a hazardous experiment; in regarding one's own trade a sense of humour and a little wholesome cynicism are not amiss.

Perhaps no person can be a poet, or can even enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind.

The award of a pure gold medal for poetry would flatter the recipient unduly: no poem ever attains such carat purity.

Poetry must speak of others, in order to speak for the poet's imagination, in order to speak of itself; it is slowed down by poetics after its flight is over.

If certain critics and poetasters had their way, 'Ordinary Piety' and its child, Dullness, would be the masters of poetry.

Poetry is not a luxury.

The Canadian people are more practical than imaginative. Romantic tales and poetry would meet with less favour in their eyes than a good political article from their newspapers.

Poetry has ceased to be a public art and has become, as Whitehead said of religion, "What man does with his aloneness.

To fine that light within--that's the genius of poetry.

A lot of innovation in language comes from poetry.