Quotes About Poetry

A poet must be a professor of the five senses and must open doors among them.

Poesía es la unión de dos palabras que uno nunca supuso que pudieran juntarse, y que forman algo así como un misterio.

La luna deja un cuchillo abandonado en el aire, que siendo acecho de plomo quiere ser dolor de sangre.

Si me preguntan ustedes por qué digo yo "Mil panderos de cristal herían la madrugada", les diré que los he visto en manos de ángeles y árboles, pero no sabré decir nada más, ni mucho menos explicar su significado. Y está bien que sea así. El hombre se acerca por medio de la poesía con más rapidez al filo donde el filósofo y el matemático vuelven la espalda en silencio.

Ay, qué terribles cinco de la tarde!. ¡Eran las cinco en todos los relojes Eran las cinco en sombra de la tarde!

Me duele hasta la punta de las venas.

Federico García Lorca

La poesia non cerca seguaci, cerca amanti.

Comprenderás que un poeta no puede decir nada de la Poesía. Eso déjaselo a los críticos y profesores. Pero ni tú ni yo ni ningún poeta sabemos lo que es la Poesía.

The still waters of the air under the bough of the echo. The still waters of the water under a frond of stars. The still waters of your mouth under a thicket of kisses. — Federico García Lorca, "Variación/Variations," Selected Poems by Federico García Lorca . Translated from the Spanish by Lysander Kemp, from (New Directions 1955)

También sobre el alma nieva. La nieve del alma tiene copos de besos y escenas que se hundieron en la sombra o en la luz del que las piensa.

Buscad el gran sol del centro hechos una piña zumbadora. El sol que se desliza por los bosques seguro de no encontrar una ninfa, el sol que destruye números y no ha cruzado nunca un sueño, el tatuado sol que baja por el río y muge seguido de caimanes.

La poesía no quiere adeptos, quiere amantes.

Vamos al rincón oscuro, donde yo siempre te quiera, que no me importe la gente, ni el veneno que nos echa.

The New York dawn hasfour columns of mudand a hurricane of black dovesthat paddle in putrescent waters.

Green, how much I want you green.Green wind. Green branches.The ship upon the seaand the horse in the mountain.

I touched her sleeping breasts,and they opened to me suddenlylike spikes of hyacinth.

At any given moment I think a plant is about to be born in some corner of me. Aware of something strange going on, I begin to watch for it, sensing that it may have artistic promise. I would be happy if the idea weren't a complete loss. But I can only watch and wait, indefinitely. I don't know how to nurture the plant or make it bloom. All I have is the feeling or hope that it will grow leaves of poetry or of something that could become poetry when seen by certain eyes.

And just what is the most precious thing in life that riches can supply? Easy. For me, it's Time. Time. Time to read and write poetry if I want to. Or to write a book if it takes my fancy. Time to travel on the slightest whim, to walk in the woods, to think, to commission art, to read, to drink, to hang out with friends and loved ones … to do just about anything really, as long as it does not involve day after grinding day making money in an office or a factory for somebody else.

Mad gone' may mean literally 'crazy about', but in the context it makes a bad pun on Maud Gonne, the Irish activist—politically and culturally—whom W. B. Yeats, in fact, came to be 'mad gone' on, proposing several times to her, but each time turned down. Yeats, unable to get the mother, eventually proposed to Maud's daughter, Iseult, in 1917.

All I knew about Ethiopia was from a few records that I like, as well as what I read about the famine. But you get there and it's another world. It's filled with art and music and poetry and intellectuals and writers - all kinds of people.

The neurologist had dismissed her case after a single visit, handing out an easy nostrum by telling her father that if she continued to write poetry, she would be all right.

Il presidente del Senegal, il poeta Leopold Sedar Senghor, ci ha detto in un incontro: "Presto, non perdete tempo. Girate l'Africa nera, in lungo e in largo per ascoltare gli ultimi nostri cantastorie. Ogni vecchio griot che muore è una biblioteca che brucia".

As astronomy is the daughter of idleness, geometry is the daughter of property, and if it were a question of poetry we would likely find that she is the daughter of love.