Quotes About Poetry

When a man is unhappy he writes damned bad poetry, I find.

poetry: the best words in the best order." — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

What cannot be said will be wept.

You are, I think, an evening star, the fairest of all the stars.

The gleaming stars all about the shining moon Hide their bright faces, when full-orbed and splendid In the sky she floats, flooding the shadowed earth with clear silver light.

His mind took one of its odd jumps. He opened a clean page in his grimy notebook, and in the twig-divided shade of a wild cherry, infested with tent caterpillars, he began to make notes for a poem.

There's the most extraordinary, unheard of poetry buried in America, but none of the conventional means known to culture can even begin to extract it...the agony is too deep, the disorder too big for art enterprises undertaken in the old way.

Whenever I write a dramatic poem I can't understand why the characters should ever want to be anything but poets themselves.

I am a more disinterested Ginsberg admirer than Eddie is. Eddie, so to speak, comes to the table with a croupier's rake. He works for the house. He skims from poetry.

Call that a wonder, Cretan-born woman? 9970 Never listened when poetry Sang its sweet lessons? Ionia's and Hellas's Ancientest legends Of a gods-and-heroes abundance, Never heard them? Nothing that's done today's More than a pitiful Echo of glorious Ancestral days; 9980 Nothing, your story is, Compared with the lovely lie, More trustworthy than truth, That is sung about Maia's son.

Oftentimes I say to myself, "Thou alone art wretched: all other mortals are happy, none are distressed like thee!" Then I read a passage in an ancient poet, and I seem to understand my own heart. I have so much to endure! Have men before me ever been so wretched?

Suelo decirme a mí mismo: Tu destino no tiene igual: comparados contigo, los demás hombres son felices; porque jamás mortal alguno se vio atormentado como tú. Entonces leo a cualquier poeta antiguo y me parece que es el libro mi propio corazón. ¡Qué! ¿Aún me queda tanto que sufrir? ¿Y antes que yo ha habido hombres tan desgraciados?

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Wer das Dichten will verstehen, muß ins Land der Dichtung gehen; wer den Dichter will verstehen, muß in Dichters Lande gehen.

I think of you when upon the sea the sun flings her beams. I think of you when the moonlight shines in silvery streams. I see you when upon the distant hills the dust awakes; At night when on a fragile bridge the traveler quakes. I hear you when the blows rise on high, with murmur deep. To tread the silent grove where wander I, When all's asleep.

Només vaig escriure poemes d'amor quan estimava. Com hauria pogut escriure cançons d'odi, sense odi? [...] Com hauria pogut jo, per a qui només tenen importància la cultura i la barbàrie, odiar una nació [la francesa] que figura entre les més cultes del món, i a la qual devia una part tan gran de la meva formació?

Wer den Dichter will verstehen Muss in Dichters Lande gehen.

Schöpft des Dichters reine Hand,. Wasser wird sich ballen. __Lied und Gebilde

Neuere Poeten tun viel Wasser in die Tinte. (More recent poets put a lot of water in the ink.) -- Goethe: Aus Makariens Archiv. Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre. III 18

Amidst your Ardor for Greek and Latin I hope you will not forget your mother Tongue. Read Somewhat in the English Poets every day. . . . You will never be alone, with a Poet in your Poket. You will never have an idle Hour.

There is the view that poetry should improve your life. I think people confuse it with the Salvation Army.

I don't look on poetry as closed works. I feel they're going on all the time in my head and I occasionally snip off a length.

My poetry is often criticized for a failure to communicate, but I take issue with this; my intention is to communicate and my feeling is that a poem that communicates something that's already known by the reader is not really communicating anything to him and in fact shows a lack of respect for him.

Leaves around the door are penciled losses.