Quotes About Poetry

I think it's easy to see with the existence of these forms, the intermixing of prose and poetry, that they are really two sides of the same coin and that one doesn't do well without something of the other. Prose falls flat on its face without incorporating the dance of poetry and poetry has no voice without the narrative touch of prose.

It might sound a little glib, but maybe I don't know what a finished poem is. I lean toward the school that a poem is never finished, it's just abandoned.

One of the main activities of the Poet Laureate is to embody poetry. It is really helpful to see someone who presents poetry and makes them want to take poetry home with them.

I clearly remember that I finished my first poem, though it was not very good, when I was 16 years old. I wrote it on a desk pad. It was called "Requiem" and had phrases like "the seasick swaying trees."

My path is deeply littered with favorite poems.

Sometimes when a prose poem is floundering, I rewrite it as verse, and it's better in that form. The reverse process of verse into prose poem, also works to clarify what's working in the writing and what's not. It's not a blunt line that demarcates the difference between verse and the prose poem.

Basically poetry is not only something enjoyable, but a reservoir for wisdom, and a mirror that people can look into and see something in their own life.

When a line is good it ceases to belong to any school. A line of prose must be as immutable as a line of poetry.

Shall I compare thee to a blue veined cheese thou art more moldy and more curdly blue

the problem with poetic justice is that it never knows when to stop.

A noise came from the upstairs hall; I heard the bookshelves fall. A ghost was reading poetry to entertain us all.

What's poetry?" asked Kerouac. "Everything," Gregory replied.

Kareeda ni Karasu no tomarikeri Aki no kure trans: On a bare branch A crow is perched - Autumn evening

For a lovely bowl Let us arrange these flowers... For there is no rice

What is important is to keep our mind high in the world of true understanding, and returning to the world of our daily experience to seek therein the truth of beauty. No mater what we may be doing at a given moment, we must not forget that it has a bearing upon our everlasting self which is poetry.

If I had the knack I'd sing like Cherry flakes falling

Sycamore seed twirling,O, writhe to its measure!Dust swirling trims pleasure.Thorns prance in a gale.In air snow flickers,twigs tap,elms drip.Swaggering, shimmering fall,drench and towel us all!

The mystic purchases a moment of exhilaration with a lifetime of confusion and the confusion is infectious and destructive. It is confusing and destructive to try and explain anything in terms of anything else, poetry in terms of psychology.

It is at once by way of poetry and through poetry, as with music, that the soul glimpses splendors from beyond the tomb; and when an exquisite poem brings one's eyes to the point of tears, those tears are not evidence of an excess of joy, they are witness far more to an exacerbated melancholy, a disposition of the nerves, a nature exiled among imperfect things, which would like to possess, without delay, a paradise revealed on this very same earth.

Voluptuous bloom and fragrance rare The summer to its rose may bring; Far sweeter to the wooing air The hidden violet of spring. Still, still that lovely ghost appears, Too fair, too pure, to bid depart; No riper love of later years Can steal its beauty from the heart.

The experiment of poetry, as far as I am concerned, happens when the poem carries you beyond where you could have reasonably expected to go.

Poetry is the lifeblood of rebellion, revolution, and the raising of consciousness.

The most astonishing joy is to receive from the muses the gift of a whole lyric.

I was pushing for a career in poetry and of course the received wisdom was that you would never make a living at it.