Quotes About Poetry

She (my mother) could still recite them (the poems) in full when she was lying helpless and nearly blind, in her bed, an old lady. Reciting, her voice took on resonance and firmness, it rang with the old fervor, with ferocity even. She was teaching me one more, almost her last, lesson: emotions do not grow old. I knew that I would feel as she did, and I do.

The poet cannot invent new words every time, of course. He uses the words of the tribe. But the handling of the word, the accent, a new articulation, renew them.

exist? emoÅ£ii nepermise, precum, de pild?, viÅ£elismul la poarta de aur fals a literaturii proaste. (...) Românul este, de altfel, leneÅŸ în viaÅ£a de toate zilele, liric în poezie, tembel în politic? ÅŸi impresionist în critica literar?.

As I said, I started with poetry, and I also wrote criticism and dialogue. But I realized that I was most successful at dialogue. Perhaps I abandoned criticism because I am full of contradictions, and when you write an essay you are not supposed to contradict yourself. But in the theater, by inventing various characters, you can. My characters are contradictory not only in their language, but in their behavior as well.

O critic? "negativ? se realizeaz? str?lucitor pe lucidit??i m?runte. Lucrul acesta îl ÅŸtia pân? ÅŸi Titu Maiorescu: cita cazul omului de bun-simÅ£ care s-a revoltat c? poetul compar? ochii iubitei cu dou? stele, c?ci este absurd s? g?seÅŸti o asem?nare între ochii mari, negri ÅŸi stelele mici, argintii.

Poezia este destinata poeziei si nu publicului. Poetul nu are nevoie de public. Publicul confunda poezia cu sansoneta.

you got him alone tonight--there'll be a beautiful moon to fill him with poetry and loneliness

I remember being struck that, as with the Old Possum poems, Eliot had written "Billy McCaw" with a defined verse and chorus almost as if he were writing lyrics. Here Eliot betrays that he was American. I don't believe any British poet wrote at the time like this. Years later Valerie told me that Eliot invariably had a hit tune of the time in his head when he wrote what she called his "off-duty" poems.

He hangs in shades the orange bright,Like golden lamps in a green night.

I wouldLove you ten years before the Flood,And you should, if you please, refuseTill the conversion of the Jews.My vegetable love should growVaster than empires, and more slow.

For Juliana comes, and she, what I do to the grass, does to my thoughts and me.

As historians reflect on her renown and her legacy, they will come to judge Diana, Princess of Wales as one of the most influential figures of this, or any other, age. For as long as there are poets, playwrights and men with hearts to break, tales will be told of the princess who died across the water and returned home to be crowned a queen, the queen of all our hearts. Diana, Princess of Wales. She wrote poetry in our souls. And made us wonder.

In a general way, I want to be a kind of flag-waver, bunting hanger-up, drum-beater, you name it, for poetry.

Poetry is at the centre of my life, too, emotionally speaking, and intellectually speaking - it's just that I'm one of those people who enjoy doing other stuff as well.

More people are reading poetry now than at any time in the history of the human race.

While also, importantly, not wanting to dumb it down or pretend the days of 'difficult' poetry are over, because we live in a pluralist culture and there's room for 'difficult' poetry alongside rap and everything else. And poetry won't be for everyone, but everyone should have the choice.

Thanks partly to the kind of poets that we now have and partly to funding, there's been a gigantic shift in the way poetry is perceived... Poems on the Underground, poets in schools, football clubs, zoos.

I wanted to reimagine the role, in a way that was respectful of its traditional responsibilities but made them part of a wider pattern of poetry about national incidents, events, preoccupations and to spend a great deal of time going to schools trying to demystify poetry.

Those who say we should dismantle the role of Poet Laureate altogether, the trick they miss is that being called this thing, with the weight of tradition behind it, and with the association of the Royal family, does allow you to have conversations and to open doors, and wallets, for the good of poetry in a way that nothing else would allow.

It's just human. We all have the jungle inside of us. We all have wants and needs and desires, strange as they may seem. If you stop to think about it, we're all pretty creative, cooking up all these fantasies. it's like a kind of poetry.

Clocks are as pointless on the Tennessee as poets are on Earth.

Life, it turns out, isn't poetry! And do you know why? Because it's so resistant to criticism!

You remind me, Geralt, of an old fisherman who, towards the end of his life, discovers that fish stink and the breeze from the sea makes your bones ache. Be consistent. Talking and regretting won't get you anywhere. If I were to find that the demand for poetry had come to an end, I'd hang up my lute and become a gardener. I'd grow roses.

Truth is one thing, poetry another.