Quotes About Poetry

Emily Dickinson would repeatedly draw on volcanic eruptions as metaphors for poetic expression.

Bolts of Melody, with more than six hundred unknown poems by Emily Dickinson, took the public by surprise in 1945.

Her edition, though, did make two errors, acceptable at that time: as her mother had done before her, she imposed titles on untitled poems and she standardised punctuation, not grasping how vital Dickinson's punctuation may be to the way we read her.

She called it a 'still—Volcano—Life', and that volcano heaves, close to the surface, throughout her poetry and a thousand letters. Stillness, for her, was not a retreat from life but a form of control.

You and I are poets, Mrs. Osgood. Our job is to raise questions, not to answer them.

I find that the thoughts spoken between the lines are the most important parts of a poem or story.

I thought you said that after this many years nothing should embarrass him? Leigh said with gentle amusement. Lucian grunted. I guess he's more sensitive than I thought. I am NOT sensitive, Cale snapped, irritated by the very suggestion. It's probably his mother's fault, Lucian said, ignoring him. Martine named him after Caliope, the muse of poetry. Between that and his father dying when he was only fifty, he's probably suffered under Martine's namby-pamby influence.

Literature is the best thing humanity has. Poetry is the heart of literature, the highest concentration of everything that is the best in the world and in man. It is the only true food for your soul.

The poet Rainer Maria Rilke once remarked that in your darkest moments you shouldn't blame your life. Instead, you should blame yourself for not being able to see the poetry.

Assim na cama, envolvido no lençol, tratei de poetar.

Tristezas não são comigo. Entretanto, em rapaz — quando fiz versos, nunca os fiz senão tristíssimos. As lágrimas que verti então — pretas, porque a tinta era preta — podiam encher este mundo, vale delas.

do botão luzia ou saquarema nasce um magnífico lírio saquarema ou luzia.

Não lia jornais. Achava que um jornal era a coisa mais inútil do mundo, depois da Câmara dos Deputados, das obras dos poetas e das missas. Não quer isto dizer que Soares fosse ateu em religião, política e poesia. Não. Soares era apenas indiferente. Olhava para todas as grandes coisas com a mesma cara com que via uma mulher feia. Podia vir a ser um grande perverso; até então era apenas uma grande inutilidade. (Luís Soares)

Poets are born knowing the language of angels.

From the shoulders, slowly a pair of wings unfolded, wings made of rainbows, of light upon water, of poetry. Calvin fell to his knees. No, Mrs. Whatsit said, though her voice was not Mrs. Whatsit's voice. Not to me Calvin. Never to me. Stand up.

The language of logical argument, of proofs,is the language of the limited self we know and can manipulate. But the language of parable and poetry, of storytelling,moves from the imprisoned language of the provable into the free language of what I must, for lack of another word, continue to call faith.

She told them to read a poem every day and think about it, and whenever they went to a new place, to find out about its history and what had made it the place it had become.

read a poem every day and think about it

And of every occupational category, poets have far and away the highest suicide rates—as much as five times higher than the general population. Something about writing poetry appears either to attract the wounded or to open new wounds—and few have so perfectly embodied that image of the doomed genius as Sylvia Plath.1

A few years later, she deliberately drove her car into a river—then, in typical fashion, wrote a poem about it: And like the cat I have nine times to die. This is Number Three.

When I should have been producing obscure volumes of verse entitled the Triumph of Humpty Dumpty or the Nose with the Luminous Dong! Or at best, like Clare, weaving fearful vision ... A frustrated poet in every man. Though it is perhaps a good idea under the circumstances to pretend at least to be proceeding with one's great work on Secret Knowledge, then one can always say when it never comes out that the title explains the deficiency.

Even almost bad poetry is better than life

Happiness is to take up the struggle in the midst of the raging storm not to pluck the lute in the moonlight or recite poetry among the blossoms.

At the age of 15, a teacher had asked me what I wanted to do for a career, and without knowing why or even how I replied that I wanted to be a poet.