Quotes About Poetry

Winter is icumen in,Lhude sing Goddamm,Raineth drop and staineth slop,And how the wind doth ramm!Sing: Goddamm.

Objectivity and again objectivity, and expression: no hindside-before-ness, no straddled adjectives (as "addled mosses dank"), no Tennysonianness of speech; nothing—nothing that you couldn't, in some circumstance, in the stress of some emotion, actually say.

For three years, out of key with his time,He strove to resuscitate the dead artOf poetry; to maintain "the sublime"In the old sense. Wrong from the start—No, hardly, but seeing he had been bornIn a half savage country, out of date.

Colloquial poetry is to the real art as the barber's wax dummy is to sculpture.

And New York is the most beautiful city in the world? It is not far from it. No urban night is like the night there... Squares after squares of flame, set up and cut into the aether. Here is our poetry, for we have pulled down the stars to our will.

Poetry must be as well written as prose.

The committed student needs to be wide awake, to look and listen closely, to slow down, scrutinize and reflect. The language of poetry is so dense, so multivalent, that it demands a concentrated act of attention — and offers its greatest rewards only to those who reread.

Music rots when it gets too far from the dance. Poetry atrophies when it gets too far from music.

The public will buy a certain amount of poetry if you give them their striptease." -- Ezra Pound

And New York is the most beautiful city in the world? It is not far from it. No urban nights are like the night there. I have looked down across the city from high windows. It is then that the great buildings lose reality and take on their magical powers. They are immaterial; that is to say, one sees but the lighted windows. Squares after squares of flame, set and cut into the Aether. Here is our poetry, for we have pulled down the stars to our will.

Let the beginning of the next line catch the rise of the rhythm wave, unless you want a definite longish pause.

Come, my songs, let us speak of perfection— / We shall get ourselves rather disliked.

So that the vines burst from my fingers And the bees weighted with pollen Move heavily in the vine-shoots: chirr---chirr---chir-rikk---a purring sound, And the birds sleepily in the branches. ZAGREUS! IO ZAGREUS!

I resolved that at 30 I would know more about poetry than any man living, that I would know what was accounted poetry everywhere, what part of poetry was "indestructible," what part could not be lost by translation and—scarcely less important—what effects were obtainable in one language only and were utterly incapable of being translated.

Another point miscomprehended by people who are clumsy at languages is that one does not need to learn a whole language in order to understand some one or some dozen poems. It is often enough to understand throroughly the poem, and every one of the few dozen of few hundred words that compose it.

Poetry is a sort of inspired mathematics, which gives us equations, not for abstract figures, triangles, squares, and the like, but for the human emotions. If one has a mind which inclines to magic rather than science, one will prefer to speak of these equations as spells or incantations; it sounds more arcane, mysterious, recondite.

Rhythm must have meaning.

Poetry had far better imply things than preach them directly... in the open pulpit her voice grows hoarse and fails.

For awhile after you quit Keats all other poetry seems to be only whistling or humming.

Tom Waits, Nighthawks On The Radio. E é sintomático que Waits cite o maldito Bukowski: sua voz poderosa se transforma ocasionalmente num grunhido disforme, as palavras são praticamente vomitadas num dialeto que, por incrível que pareça (ou não), acabam por transcender seu próprio significado. Poesia musical em estado bruto...

Usually plot is to fiction what form is to poetry. It lifts and fills the rambling language and presses it down into a single shape and sound. (85)

Philosophy should only be written as poetry.

Money is everywhere but so is poetry. What we lack are the poets.

Verde que te quiero verde. Verde viento. Verdes ramas. El barco sobre la mar y el caballo en la montaña.