Quotes About Poetry

Poetry is what is lost in translation. It is also what is lost in interpretation. That little poem means just what it says it means, nothing less but nothing more.

It is absurd to think that the only way to tell if a poem is lasting is to wait and see if it lasts. The right reader of a good poem can tell the moment it strikes him that he has taken an immortal wound—that he will never get over it.

Poetry is what is lost in translation.

Poetry is what gets lost in translation.

But the blues is a more sustained illumination, against the humiliation, rage, and sadness of life, and in turn invests the artist with not eternal youth but a scarred mortality, blessed with poetry.

There's no money in poetry, but then there's no poetry in money, either.

If there's no money in poetry, neither is there poetry in money.

Anthropologists are a connecting link between poets and scientists though their field-work among primitive peoples has often made them forget the language of science.

There is no money in poetry, but then there is no poetry in money either.

I think that the job of poetry, its political job, is to refresh the idea of justice, which is going dead in us all the time.

Ah, love, this is fear. This is fear and syllables and the beginnings of beauty.

the haiku. It has, of course, a three-part prosodic structure, five syllables–seven syllables–five syllables. But, as written in Japanese, it is usually represented in a single line and there is a long controversy about whether it should be translated as a one-line or a three-line poem.

you'll also notice that inside what is apparently a single line, there is a play of one, two, or three elements, balanced or unbalanced in various ways that are expressive in relation to what the poem is saying.

Allen Ginsberg had the idea that the image in a blues refrain was the American haiku.

Such tenderness, those afternoons and evenings, saying blackberry, blackberry, blackberry. ? Robert Hass, from "Meditation at Lagunitas," Praise ( ? Ecco, July 10, 1999)

It is good sometimes for poetry to disenchant us.

Such tenderness, those afternoons and evenings, saying blackberry, blackberry, blackberry.

It is like the keening sound the moon makes sometimes,/rising.

I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds, and bowers:Of April, May, of June, and July flowers.I sing of Maypoles, Hock-carts, wassails, wakes,Of bridegrooms, brides, and of their bridal cakes.

A sweet disorder in the dressKindles in clothes a wantonness.

Some asked how pearls did grow, and where?Then spoke I to my girlTo part her lips, and showed them thereThe quarelets of pearl.

I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds and bowers, Of April, May, of June, and July-flowers...

Whenas in silks my Julia goes,Then, then (methinks) how sweetly flowsThat liquefaction of her clothes.Next, when I cast mine eyes and seeThat brave vibration each way free;Oh how that glittering taketh me!

THE ROCK OF RUBIES, AND THE QUARRY OF PEARLS Some ask'd me where the Rubies grew: And nothing I did say, But with my finger pointed to The lips of Julia. Some ask'd how Pearls did grow, and where: Then spoke I to my girl, To part her lips, and shew me there The quarrelets of Pearl.