Quotes About Poetry

I use rock and jazz and blues rhythms because I love that music. I hope my poetry has a relationship with good-time rock'n roll.

Poetry is above all a concentration of the power of language, which is the power of our ultimate relationship to everything in the universe.

We may feel bitterly how little our poems can do in the face of seemingly out of control technological power and seemingly limitless corporate greed, yet it has always been true that poetry can break isolation, show us to ourselves when we are outlawed or made invisible, remind us of beauty where no beauty seems possible, remind us kinship where all is represented as separation." ( Defy the Space That Separates , The Nation, October 7, 1996)

What kind of beast would turn its life into words?

For now, poetry has the capacity - in its own ways and by its own means - to remind us of something we are forbidden to see.

It is always what is under pressure in us, especially under pressure of concealment--that explodes in poetry.

Saw you walking barefoot taking a long look at the new moon's eyelid later spread sleep-fallen, naked in your dark hair asleep but not oblivious of the unslept unsleeping elsewhere Tonight I think no poetry will serve Syntax of rendition: verb pilots the plane adverb modifies action verb force-feeds noun submerges the subject noun is choking verb disgraced goes on doing now diagram the sentence

You've kissed my hair to wake me. I dreamed you were a poem, I say, a poem I wanted to show someone… and I laugh and fall dreaming again of the desire to show you to everyone I love, to move openly together in the pull of gravity

The unconscious wants truth, as the body does. The complexity and fecundity of dreams come from the complexity and fecundity of the unconscious struggling to fulfill that desire. The complexity and fecundity of poetry come from the same struggle.

Poetry, in its own way, is a carrier of the sparks, because it too comes out of silence, seeking connection with unseen others.

Poetry never stood a chance of standing outside history.

We need poetry as living language, the core of every language, something that is still spoken, aloud or in the mind, muttered in secret, subversive, reaching around corners, crumpled into a pocket, performed to a community, read aloud to the dying, recited by heart, scratched or sprayed on a wall. That kind of language.

Can you remember? When we thought the poets taught how to live?

You ask me how I'm going to live the rest of my life Well, nothing is predictable with pain Did the old poets write of this? —in its odd spaces, free, many have sung and battled— But I'm already living the rest of my life not under conditions of my choosing wired into pain rider on the slow train

We murmur moonwords.

What do I mean by commitment? I'll flash back to 1821: Shelley's claim, in "The Defence of Poetry", that "poets are the unacknowledged legislaters of the world". Piously overquoted, mostly out of context, it's taken to suggest that simply by virtue of compossing verse, poets exert some exemplary moral power - in a vaue, unthreatening way. (...) He did NOT say, "Poets are the unacknowledged interior decorators of the world".

My verse works.' In two senses: as participant in political struggle, and at the personal, visceral level where it's received and its witness acknowledged. These are two responses to the question of poetry and commitment, which I take as complementary, not in opposition.

The group of writers I had grown up with in the '60s - Derek Mahon, Michael Longley, James Simmons, John Hewitt, Paul Muldoon - formed a very necessary and self-sustaining group.

I do actually dabble in a bit of poetry! And I'm yet to pen a script, but it is something that I've been telling myself I want to do.

There are interesting forms of difficulty, and there are unprofitable forms of difficulty. I mean, I enjoy some difficult poetry, but some of it is impenetrable and I actually wouldn't want to penetrate it if I could, perhaps.

Language and poetry are endlessly fascinating. The most brilliant work can be so sparse yet so full of meaning. That's what I'm looking for in a song: imagery to describe things in ways that are perfectly concise. I'm constantly trying to find one hard, crystal thing.

I'm not really a musician. I'm a performer, and I love rock n' roll. I've embraced rock n' roll because it encompasses all the things I'm interested in: poetry, revolution, sexuality, political activism - all of these things can be found in rock n' roll.

I'm moving to Rio permanently with my family. It's one of the places left in the world where people still live with a big charge of poetry on a daily basis. I feel we've kind of lost that here in Europe.

Vegheaz? umbr?-a ??rnii,umbr? ca de iad, deschi?i tu ochi-mi legi cu lan? de fier...?i cad în pat p?truns de mii de suli?i în m?nunchi... ?i ca s?-mi pot goni durerea- vino,moarte... Ha,moarte,port la ??rmul viselor de?arte, îngroap?-m suferin?a rogu-te-n genunchi...