Quotes About Poetry

Poet' had always sounded like a profession to me, or a talent. But the dead American [Muriel Rukeyser, The Life of Poetry] made it sound like a faith.

Cherry blossoms are more beautiful when the blood of the dead stains the flowers from grass below.

For the purposes of poetry a convincing impossibility is preferable to an unconvincing possibility.

Once dialogue had come in, Nature herself discovered the appropriate measure. For the iambic is, of all measures, the most colloquial.

Poetry demands a man with a special gift for it, or else one with a touch of madness in him.

Homer has taught all other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.

It is Homer who has chiefly taught other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.

The distinction between historian and poet is not in the one writing prose and the other verse... the one describes the thing that has been, and the other a kind of thing that might be. Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are of the nature rather of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.

Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.

Poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.

I will never cease advising my friends and enemies to read poetry before anything.

The price of poetry is life.

No, the shepherd's life in poetry has always been an ideal in which the negative features, the tearing of oneself away from the great world and the disregarding of its customs, have been the decisive elements. It was a kind of sport to imagine oneself in a situation which held the promise of liberation from the fetters of civilization whilst retaining its advantages.

Only when poetry is read can it become a hobby, a habit, a daily necessity. Only so can it become 'literature', enjoyment of which is no longer confined to the solemn moments of life or to special festivities, but which may be drawn upon as desired merely to pass the time of day. Poetry thus loses the last remnant of its numinous character and becomes mere 'fiction', mere invention which can arouse aesthetic interest without claiming any element of conviction

La storia che raccontiamo è l'eterna storia dell'amore nell'eterno paese della poesia; non mettiamo date all'eternità.

Everyone is not able, or inclined, to write poetry in the narrower sense any more than everyone is qualified to take part in a walking race. But just as all of us can and do walk, so all of us can and do use language poetically.

Most poets are mad. It doesn't qualify us for anything.

I think music is poetry in the sense that I think the condition of poetry I'm going for has some qualities of music that it aspires to.

Words have not only a definition... but also the felt quality of their own kind of sound.

Queen Latifah was writing poetry. Maybe Latifah's 'Ladies First' and Angelou's 'Phenomenal Woman' are the same thing, a generation apart.

Music is more emotional than prose, more revolutionary than poetry. I'm not saying I've got the answers, just a of questions that I don't hear other artists asking.

I was quiet, and I was artistic. I liked writing poetry, and that was very strange, so I was bullied a lot.

There is some humour in 'Family Values.' I don't want everyone to think it's not going to make them laugh. But there are quite a lot of poems there that aren't funny at all.

I like Baudelaire's sentences quite a lot. I read and re-read him very often.