Quotes About Poetry

there were no bones in his body, only tunes, and no blood, but poetry.

the collective wisdom of humanity [is] enshrined in its poetry.

We can't choose our poetic fathers any more than our biological ones — but we can choose how to come to terms with them.

great poetry reaches down into the depths of our humanity and captures the very essence of our experience.

To try to write love is to confront the muck of language: that region of hysteria where language is both too much and too little, excessive and impoverished.

Are not couturiers the poets who, from year to year, from strophe to strophe, write the anthem of the feminine body?

As proffering, I love you is on the side of expenditure. Those who seek the proffering of the word (lyric poets, liars, wanderers) are subjects of expenditure; they spend the word as if it were impertinent (base) that it be recovered somewhere; they are at the extreme limit of language, where language itself...recognizes that it is without backup or guarantee, working without a net

In the next poem, Hamilton has suddenly metamorphosed into a jaded rake, who begins with a shocking, Swiftian opening line: 'Celia's an artful little slut.

Tal como em seus primeiros poemas de amor juvenis em Santa Cruz, Hamilton era capaz de imaginar as jovens como deusas castas ou como megeras atrevidas. Talvez ele não soubesse ainda qual tipo preferia.

Deshaced ese verso, quitadle los caireles de la rima, el metro, la cadencia y hasta la idea misma. Aventad las palabras, y si queda algo todavía, eso será la poesía.

The final allegation of the accuser states that Socrates made a mischievous use of certain passages in the most highly reputed poets, interpreting, for example, a line from Hesiod to mean that one should abstain from no unjust or shameful deed but do even such things for the sake of gain. Xenophon's response speaks of Socrates' standard as the beneficial or the good; it says nothing about his views on the noble and just.

I]f the poets are perhaps the men who understand best the nature of the passions which the law restrains, they are very far from being merely the servants of the legislators; they are also the men from whom the prudent legislator will learn. The genuine "quarrel between philosophy and poetry" concerns, from the philosopher's point of view, not the worth of poetry as such, but the order of rank of philosophy and poetry.

M]inisterial poetry presents the nonphilosophic life as ministerial to the philosophic life and therefore, above all, it presents the philosophic life itself. The greatest example of ministerial poetry is the Platonic dialogue.

Why does the benefactor love the recipient more than the recipient loves the benefactor? Because the benefactor lives in the recipient, the way in which the poet lives in the poem.

Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.

I cannot understand why my arm is not a lilac tree.

Poetry to [Milosz], then, was not so much a weapon as a witness against evil.

If sign and image are central to the New Testament, then it has to be read as a kind of narrative poetry. In the Scripture, we encounter types and symbols and emblems of transfiguration, and that is how the early Church, which created the New Testament, understood its own creation.

A poet knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

Gender is the poetry each of us makes out of the language we are taught.

How doth the little crocodile Improve his shining tail, And pour the waters of the Nile On every golden scale!

One of the deepest motives (as you are aware) in the human beast (so deep that many have failed to detect it) is Alliteration.

You are sad, the Knight said in an anxious tone: let me sing you a song to comfort you. Is it very long? Alice asked, for she had heard a good deal of poetry that day. It's long, said the Knight, but very, VERY beautiful. Everyone that hears me sing it - either it brings the TEARS into their eyes, or else - Or else what? said Alice, for the Knight had made a sudden pause. Or else it doesn't, you know.

FOR WANG LUN Li Bai is already on the boat, preparing to depart, I suddenly hear the sound of stamping and singing on the shore. The water of Taohua pond reaches a thousand feet in depth, But still it's not as deep as Wang Lun's feelings seeing me off.