Quotes About Poetry

He stepped back and threw his arms out. "I'm always crazy around you Rose. Here, I'm going to write an impromptu poem for you." He tipped his head back and shouted to the sky: "Rose is in red But never in blue Sharp as a thorn Fights like one too.

Another power I don't have," said Lissa ruefully. I grinned. "Hey, I have yet to meet any spirit user who can throw a punch like you can. That was poetry in motion, Liss." She groaned.

What, you don't think I'm capable of poetry after sex?

ONCE WHEN I WAS ninth grade i had to write a paper on a poem. One of the lines was"If your eyes weren't open you wouldn't know the difference between dreaming and waking' It hadn't meant meant much to me at the time. After all there'd been a guy in the class that i liked so how could i be expected to pay attention to literary analysis? Now three year later i understand the poem perfectly.

Der Abend ist mein Buch Der Abend ist mein Buch. Ihm prangen die Deckel purpurn in Damast; ich löse seine goldnen Spangen mit kühlen Händen, ohne Hast. Und lese seine erste Seite, beglückt durch den vertrauten Ton, - und lese leiser seine zweite, und seine dritte träum ich schon.

The question is: Why have these poems and prayers endured? Why, thousands of years later, do we still have them? And the answer you'll return to again and again is: They speak to our human experience.

The Young Tradition (1966) and its successor, So Cheerfully Round (1967), both released on Transatlantic, are rustic tapestries of ballads, carols and street cries from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries; a parade of serving-maids, poachers, fishermen, cunning foxes, bold dragoons, pretty ploughboys and hungry children.

Spanish is so musical that a soap powder commercial in Spanish is more pleasing to the ear than the best free verse in English—the Spanish language is so beautiful that much of its poetry sounds best if the listener does not understand the meaning.

Sometimes men envisioned a feminine muse who inspired them to poetry, literature, art, or refined sensibility. Women, by contrast, often imagined the soul as a masculine presence that provided wisdom and strength.

poetry is a special way of imagining the world or, to put this in more cognitive terms, a special mode of thinking with its own momentum and its own peculiar advantages.

As Jurij Lotman has provocatively put it, invoking contemporary notions of computer science, if we understood better how a poem achieved the astonishing degree of "information storage" that it does, our understanding of cybernetics in general might well be advanced.

And of course, this is the traditional theme in romantic poetry. I'm very science oriented in many ways. So much so that a lot of people who hate science dislike my books because they dislike the scientific emphasis. But, at the same time I am science oriented, I don't reject other modes of knowledge. When I find something repeated over and over, my thought is, if enough people have thought this over for many centuries, it's worth looking at no matter how wild it sounds.

An elementary example: I can give a physicist, or a chemist, a book of poems. After study, the scientist can report back that the book weighs x kilograms, measures y centimeters in thickness, has been printed with ink having a certain chemical formula and bound with glue having another chemical formula etc. But scientific study cannot answer the question, Are these good poems? (Science in fact cannot answer any questions with is or are in them, but not all scientists realize that yet.)

Ezra Pound had the peculiar distinction of winning an award from the Library of Congress for writing the best poem of the year, in 1948, while government psychiatrists insisted he was insane.)

In modern mathematics, information content has a precise numerical value, based on the reverse of the probability that you can predict it in advance. Thus, an astrology column has virtually no information, a great poem has high information, and the ravings of an acute schizophrenic have such enormous information that nobody can predict them or make use of them.

Norbert Weiner once simplified the meaning of this equation by saying that great poetry contains more information than political speeches. You never know what will come next in a truly creative poem, but in a George Bush speech you not only know what will come next, you probably could predict the whole speech, in general, before he even opens his mouth.

Villon is great because he doesn't pretend to know what he doesn't know. What he does know he tells us in direct language—language so simple that stupid critics have debated several hundred years now on what makes his poetry so strong.

I could not love thee, dear, so much,' Ã¢â'¬Â I said, " Ã¢â'¬Ëœloved I not honor more.' 

The sun surrendered its splendor—why, it was like poetry; he was a poet; Norman smiled. He was many things. If they only knew—— But

That moment she was mine, mine, fair, Perfectly pure and good: I found A thing to do, and all her hair In one long yellow string I wound Three times her little throat around, And strangled her. No pain felt she; I am quite sure she felt no pain. As a shut bud that holds a bee, I warily oped her lids: again Laughed the blue eyes without a stain. And I untightened the next tress About her neck; her cheek once more Blushed bright beneath my burning kiss . . .

Any nose May ravage with impunity a rose.

I find earth not gray but rosy; Heaven not grim but fair of hue. Do I stoop? I pluck a posy; Do I stand and stare? All's blue.

What does it all mean, poet? Well, Your brains beat into rhythm, you tell What we felt only; you expressed You hold things beautiful the best, And pace them in rhyme so, side by side. 'Tis something, nay 'tis much: but then, Have you yourself what's best for men? Are you—-poor, sick, old ere your time—- Nearer one whit your own sublime Than we who never have turned a rhyme? Sing, riding's a joy! For me, I ride.

Not the bee upon the blossom, In the pride o' sunny noon; Not the little sporting fairy, All beneath the simmer moon; Not the poet, in the moment Fancy lightens in his e'e, Kens the pleasure, feels the rapture, That thy presence gi'es to me.