Quotes About Poetry

No, I think that a person writes a poem because they have an inner urge of something that they want to express, and I think it's that inner urge that you want to express when you write a piece of music.

Billy Collins writes lovely poems. Limpid, gently and consistently startling, more serious than they seem, they describe all the worlds that are and were and some others besides.

One who writes a poem writes it because the language prompts, or simply dictates, the next line.

My mum is a singer and harpist, and my dad writes fantastic poetry, so we've grown up around a lot of words and music.

The one who writes a poem writes it above all because verse writing is an extraordinary accelerator of conscience, of thinking, of comprehending the universe.

Poems have a different music from ordinary language, and every poem has a different kind of music of necessity, and that's, in a way, the hardest thing about writing poetry is waiting for that music, and sometimes you never know if it's going to come.

Imagine writing a poem with a sweating, worried-looking boy handing you a different pencil at the end of every word. My golf, you may say, is no poem; nevertheless, I keep wanting it to be one.

The main problem with writing in verse is, if your fourth line doesn't come out right, you've got to throw four lines away and figure out a whole new way to attack the problem. So the mortality rate is terrific.

I always thought that poetry is the verdict that others give to a certain kind of writing. So to call yourself a poet is a kind of dangerous description. It's for others; it's for others to use.

Some of my educated Filipino friends were aspiring poets, but their aspirations were all in the direction of the United States. They had no desire to learn from the bardic tradition that continued in the barrios. Their ideal would have been to write something that would get them to Iowa, where they would study creative writing.

When I was 18, I took a trip to Thailand with a friend. We stayed for a month. Bangkok was very raw for a teenager: there were no cellphones, no Internet, and the only music I had with me was this cassette by Liz Phair. I was writing a lot of poetry, and she embodied a talky style of songwriting that I found very accessible.

I have a deep and ongoing love of Iceland, particular the landscape, and when writing 'Burial Rites,' I was constantly trying to see whether I could distill its extraordinary and ineffable qualities into a kind of poetry.

When you begin to write poems because you love language, because you love poetry. Something happens that makes you write poems. And the writing of poems is incredibly pleasurable and addictive.

Well, that's not poetry, that's propaganda, and not even good propaganda at that.

Well," said Madame Morrible in a carrying tone, "one expects poetry, if it is Poetry, to offend. It is the Right of Art.

one expects poetry, if it is Poetry, to offend.

Galinda, who didn't know much about Poetry, thought perhaps this was the accepted way of appreciating it. She grumbled a little to Shenshen, who sat in a straightback chair to one side, looking dropsical. Wax from the taper was about to drip onto Sheenshen's silk-shouldered white gown with the lemon-chiffon swags, and ruin it, most likely, but Galinda decided Shenshen's family could afford to replace a gown. She kept still.

Well, said Madame Morrible in a carrying tone, one expects poetry, if it is Poetry, to offend. It is the Right of Art. I think she's bonders, said Elphaba.

Graham Greene, Beryl Bainbridge, Barbara Vine, Seamus Heaney, some Dan Turner — Hollywood Detective, and Shakespeare's sonnets.

All the words I have to say have turned into stars.

She was the amoureuse of all the novels, the heroine of all the plays, the vague "she" of all the poetry books.

Oh, if somewhere there were a being strong and handsome, a valiant heart, passionate and sensitive at once, a poet's spirit in an angel's form, a lyre with strings of steel, sounding sweet-sad epithalamiums to the heavens, then why should she not find that being?

H]e was soon to be head clerk; it was time to settle down. So he gave up his flute, exalted sentiments, and poetry; for every bourgeois in the flush of his youth, were it but for a day, a moment, has believed himself capable of immense passions, of lofty enterprises. The most mediocre libertine has dreamed of sultanas; every notary bears within him the debris of a poet.

With a little more time, patience, and hard work, and above all with a more sensitive taste for the formal aspects of arts, he would have managed to write mediocre poetry, good enough for a lady's album – and this is always a gallant thing to do, whatever you may say.