Quotes About Poetry

The reason for their original use of the trochaic tetrameter was that their poetry was satyric and more connected with dancing than it now is. As soon, however, as a spoken part came in, nature herself found the appropriate metre. The iambic, we know, is the most speakable of metres, as is shown by the fact that we very often fall into it in conversation, whereas we rarely talk hexameters, and only when we depart from the speaking tone of voice.

The distinction between historian and poet is not in the one writing prose and the other verse — you might put the work of Herodotus into verse, and it would still be a species of history; it consists really in this, that 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.

Imaginative poetry produces a far greater mental strain than novels. It produces probably the severest strain of any form of literature. It is the highest form of literature. It yields the highest form of pleasure, and teaches the highest form of wisdom. In a word, there is nothing to compare with it. I say this with sad consciousness of the fact that the majority of people do not read poetry.

We go about in a world where secret influences are continually at work for us or against us, and we do not suspect their existence, because we have no imagination. For it needs imagination to perceive the truth—that is why the greatest poets are always the greatest teachers.

For Jan was still suffering from the romantic illusion–the cause of so much misery and so much poetry–that every man has only one real love in his life.

Kalevala, whereas

the gap between the poetry she wrote and the poetry she contained was, for Natalie, something unsolvable.

Todas las mujeres de la familia Blackwood habían recogido la comida que daba la tierra y la habían conservado, y los tarros de intensos colores con embutidos y verduras y mermeladas granate, ámbar y verde oscuro estaban uno al lado de los otros y allí se quedarían para siempre, como un poema compuesto por las mujeres de la familia Blackwood.

Dead my old fine hopes And dry my dreaming but still... Iris, blue each spring

El sueño posee una maravillosa poesía, una exacta facultad alegórica, un humorismo incomparable y una deliciosa ironía.

There is so much writ upon the parchment of leaves, So much of beauty blown upon the winds, I can but fold my hands and sink my knees In the leaf pages. —James Still

consider the many ways of failing that await the poet who makes his or her own consciousness of emotions into the subject of a poem, instead of the emotion itself.

I]'m reliving it street by street, hour by hour, with the mission of neutralizing it, and transforming it into an inoffensive past that i can keep in my heart without either disowning it or suffering from it. That's not easy. It's at once painful and poetic.

When she does not find love, she may find poetry.

If the middle classes haven't the same need of an apocalypse, it is because long rows of figures have a poetry, a prestige which tempers in some sort the boredom associated with money; whereas, when money is counted in sixpences, we have boredom in its pure, unadulterated state. Nevertheless, that taste shown by bourgeois, both great and small, for Fascism, indicates that, in spite of everything, they too can feel bored.

Every human being has at his roots here below a certain terrestrial poetry, a reflection of the heavenly glory, the link, of which he is more or less vaguely conscious, with his universal country. Affliction is the tearing up of these roots.

All greek civilization is a search for bridges to relate human misery and divine perfection. Their art, which is incomparable, their poetry, their philosophy, the sciences which they invented (geometry, astronomy, mechanics, physics, biology) are nothing but bridges.

Now for the Poet, he nothing affirmeth, therefore he never lieth.

Harp of the North, farewell! The hills grow dark, On purple peaks a deeper shade descending; In twilight copse the glow-worm lights her spark, The deer, half seen, are to the covert wending. Resume thy wizard elm! the fountain lending, And the wild breeze, thy wilder minstrelsy; Thy numbers sweet with nature's vespers blending, With distant echo from the fold and lea, And herd-boy's evening pipe, and hum of housing bee.

Oh fair, oh sweet and holy as dew at morning tide, I gaze on thee, and yearnings, sad in my bosom hide.

I still write poetry from time to time, but my whole life is so music-oriented at this point that it's hard for me to even think about having other hobbies.

Poetry, being elegance itself, cannot hope to achieve visibility... It insists on living its own life.

Being engaged with life. One has to develop a poet's eye for perfect moments, moments that most people pass by.

I cannot speak for more than an hour exclusively about poetry. At that point, life itself takes over again.