Quotes About Poetry

The bitterest satires and noblest eulogies on married life have come from poets.

No good poetry is ever written in a manner twenty years old, for to write in such a manner shows conclusively that the writer thinks from books, convention and cliché, not from real life.

But it is the province of religion, of philosophy, of pure poetry only, to go beyond life, beyond time, into eternity.

The poet is one who is able to keep the fresh vision of the child alive.

I have always made my own rules, in poetry as in life - though I have tried of late to cooperate more with my family. I do, however, believe that without order or pattern poetry is useless.

When I'm writing poetry, 99.9% of my writing begins in English. I spent most of my life in English, although I am bilingual.

The dying swan, when years her temples pierce, In music-strains breathes out her life and verse, And, chanting her own dirge, tides on her wat'ry hearse.

Poetic language is singularly appropriate for recounting the life of the king who is traditionally accepted as the author of the poetic psalms, some of which are included in the narrative.

It's just me and my guitar, and the rhythm's from there, and the poetry of life.

I am absolutely convinced that my life was redeemed by poetry.

Poetry is what I've done my whole life. And every important thing in my life had found itself into poems.

We strive for beauty and balance, the sensual over the sentimental.

My whole life has been a twenty years struggle between poetry and prose, or, if you like to call it so, Music and Law.

The nightmare Life-in-Death was she.

If your everyday life appears to be unworthy subject matter, do not complain to life. Complain to yourself, Lament that you are not poet enough to call up its wealth.

A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape of the universe, helps to extend everyone's knowledge of himself and the world around him.

Don't be too harsh to these poems until they're typed. I always think typescript lends some sort of certainty: at least, if the things are bad then, they appear to be bad with conviction.

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughsAbout the lilting house and happy as the grass was green.

You can tear a poem apart to see what makes it tick.... You're back with the mystery of having been moved by words. The best craftsmanship always leaves holes and gaps... so that something that is not in the poem can creep, crawl, flash or thunder in.

Love is the last light spoken.

This poem has been called obscure. I refuse to believe that it is obscurer than pity, violence, or suffering. But being a poem, not a lifetime, it is more compressed.

the sloeback, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat bobbing sea

Our snow was not only shaken from whitewash buckets down the sky, it came shawling out of the ground and swam and drifted out of the arms and hands and bodies of the trees; snow grew overnight on the roofs of houses like a pure and grandfather moss, minutely white-ivied the walls and settled on the postman, opening the gate, like a dumb, numb thunderstorm of white, torn Christmas cards.

A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. – Dylan Thomas