Quotes About Poetry

Poetry is a special use of language that opens onto the real. The business of the poet is truth telling, which is why in the Celtic tradition no one could be a teacher unless he or she was a poet.

Poetry is the utterance of deep and heart-felt truth - the true poet is very near the oracle.

I'm not a stickler for truth. To me, lying in poetry is much more fun. I'm against lying in life, in principle, in any other activity except poetry.

Poets themselves, tho' liars by profession, always endeavour to give an air of truth to their fictions.

Poetry is truth in its Sunday clothes.

There is nothing more poetic than the truth. He who does not see poetry in it will always be a poor versifier outside of it.

Poetry lies its way to the truth.

We need a safe place, a reserve of truth, a place where words kindle ideas and set ideas sparking off in others, a word sanctuary. Poetry is this gathering place of words.

The poets are almost always wrong about the facts... That's because they are not really interested in facts: only in truth...

On the meridian of time, there is no injustice: there is only the poetry of motion creating the illusion of truth and drama.

When a poem doesn't work, the first question to ask yourself is, 'Am I telling the truth?'

Freedom is slavery some poets tell us. Enslave yourself to the right leader's truth, Christ's or Karl Marx', and it will set you free.

A word is no light matter. Words have with truth been called fossil poetry, each, that is, a symbol of a creative thought.

He must be theory-mad beyond redemption who ... shall ... persist in attempting to reconcile the obstinate oils and waters of Poetry and Truth.

Poetry is not truth, it is the resurrection of presences.

We stalk the truth as poets, sensualists, a duality, limited insanity. We labor in our muse, carving alphabets of experience into our hearts.

Truth speaks best in the language of poetry and symbolism, I think.

I enjoy poetry where I can talk as bizarre as I please, but theology or philosophy, I always respect the truth by taking it a step further.

Poetry is, above all, an approach to the truth of feeling.

The whole truth... sings only - and all lovers are the song.

Demanding historical (or scientific) veracity as a prerequisite for truth is another kind of tunnel vision. To do so is to mistake poetry for prose.

Truth shines the brighter, clad in verse.

In science, reason is the guide; in poetry, taste. The object of the one is truth, which is uniform and indivisible; the object of the other is beauty, which is multiform and varied.

In poetry you can leave out everything but the truth.