Quotes About Poetry

Poetry consists in so rendering concrete objects that the emotions produced by the objects shall arise in the reader….

The poem which is absolutely original is absolutely bad.

But poets more classical than they have the same essential quality of transmuting ideas into sensations, of transforming an observation into a state of mind.

April is the cruelest month - - - - mixing memory and desire - - -

If you compare several representative passages of the greatest poetry you see how great is the variety of types of combination, and also how completely any semi-ethical criterion of "sublimity" misses the mark. For it is not the "greatness," the intensity, of the emotions, the components, but the intensity of the artistic process, the pressure, so to speak, under which the fusion takes place, that counts.

A poesia de um povo deriva sua vida da fala do povo e, por sua vez, dá-lhe uma vida; e representa o seu ponto mais elevado de consciência, o seu maior poder e a sua mais delicada sensibilidade.

I cannot feel that my appreciation of Milton leads anywhere outside of the mazes of sound.

T.S. Eliot said to me "There's only one way a poet can develop his actual writing – apart from self-criticism & continual practice. And that is by reading other poetry aloud – and it doesn't matter whether he understands it or not (i.e. even if it's in another language.) What matters above all, is educating the ear.

Summer's End Cruel orb, my foe, the sun, Glaring upon things I never want to see again The proud, lightning-limbed oaks Of Hekhasor The shimmering blue waters of Silverhome's lake And the endless, endless sky Go away, foul sun! You make me sad.

the object of war was not to win battles or destroy the enemy, but to provide a field for the performance of heroic deeds, which were subsequently immortalized in poetry. For the early Arabs to fight honorably was more important than to win.   T

That's what poems are for, so you don't understand a thing.

It was a saying about noble figures in old Irish poems—he would give his hawk to any man that asked for it, yet he loved his hawk better than men nowadays love their bride of tomorrow. He would mourn a dog with more grief than men nowadays mourn their fathers.

And as if reporting some felony to the police they let you know you were not John Donne.

You carried it all, like shards and moults on a tray, To be reassembled In the poem to be written so prettily, And to be worn like a fiesta mask By the daemon that gazed through it As through empty sockets – that still gazes Through it at me.

Mary is an apple. Whoever plucks her Nails his heart To the leafless tree.

The Hawk in the Rain I drown in the drumming ploughland, I drag up Heel after heel from the swallowing of the earth's mouth, From clay that clutches my each step to the ankle With the habit of the dogged grave, but the hawk Effortlessly at height hangs his still eye.

Flowerlike, I loved nothing. from Mayday on Holderness

It was a visit from the goddess, the beauty Who was poetry's sister—she had come To tell poetry she was spoiling us. Poetry listened, maybe, but we heard nothing And poetry did not tell us. And we Only did what poetry told us to do.

Blanche: No, I have the misfortune of being an English instructor. I attempt to instill a bunch of bobby-soxers and drugstore Romeos with a reverence for Hawthorne and Whitman and Poe!

Ah, Valentine's Day. This Author personally detests the holiday. A girl must take the measure of her worth by the number of cards and bouquets she receives, and a young man is forced to spew poetry as if anyone actually spoke in rhyme. It's a wonder the holiday hasn't been

Their moments together would form a short poem and not a long and lusty novel...

And I know I'm supposed to feel guilty for wanting people to buy my books... and books in general? Novels and poetry, they belong to the realm of art. How dirty of us to try to hawk art! But, after a decade of hand-wringing and apologies, I can't quite muster the guilt anymore.

Theater is far superior to film in poetry, in abstract poetry.

Vos me dirás que aquí hay grandes poetas, y es cierto. Yo he dicho que la poesía no es un mérito humano, sino una fatalidad que se padece. Aquí hay un buen montón de hombres atacados de poesía, mientras que te invito a que me recuentes los creadores activos, es decir, los inteligentes.