Quotes About Poetry

I think good poetry should startle, shatter and, yes, entertain while getting as close to the truth as possible. I can get all the comfort I need from a good cigar.

I guess what I meant is that you are better off doing nothing than doing something badly. But the problem is that bad writers tend to have the self-confidence, while the good ones tend to have self-doubt. [1989 interview in the literary journal "Arete". In response to the question Your poem 'friendly advice to a lot of young men' says that one is better off living in a barrel than he is writing poetry. Would you give this same advice today?]

poetry it takes a lot of desperation dissatisfaction and disillusion to write a few good poems. it's not for everybody either to write it or even to read it.

Writing poems is not difficult, living them is.

also, the oldest notion still in vogue is that if you can't understand a poem then it almost certainly is a good one.

I think that when a woman has kept her legs closed for 35 years it's too late either for love or for poetry.

Will you read some of your poems?" "Christ, no." "Why not?" "I just want to drink." "You talk about drinking a lot in your books. Do you think drinking has helped your writing?" "No. I'm just an alcoholic who became a writer so that I would be able to stay in bed until noon." I

You say you often feel this madness. what do you do when it comes upon you? I write poetry. is poetry madness? non- poetry is madness. what is madness? madness is ugliness. what is ugly? to each man, something different

y Dios, sí, él era blando. los poemas eran todos muy duros; había jugado al duro siempre, pero era un blando. en realidad todo el mundo era blando... el duro estaba allí sólo para cubrir al blando. qué trampa ridícula y estúpida.

Poetry says too much in too short a time; prose says too little and takes too long.

Poezia spune prea multe într-un timp prea scurt; proza spune prea puÅ£in ÅŸi dureaz? prea mult.

to be writing poetry at the age of 50 like a schoolboy, surely, I must be crazy;

Secoli di poesia e siamo ancora al punto di partenza.

and I can still write a poem (sometimes), don't forget that, and even if they don't pay off, it's better than waiting for death and oil

The loss of these tastes [for poetry and music] is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.

If I had my life over again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once a week; for perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied would have thus been kept active through use. The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.

With wine, poetry, or virtue as you choose. But get drunk.

O. A. Manning's poetry

We've all led raucous lives, some of them inside, some of them out. But only the poem you leave behind is what's important. Everyone knows this. The voyage into the interior is all that matters, Whatever your ride. Sometimes I can't sit still for all the asininities I read. Give me the hummingbird, who has to eat sixty times His own weight a day just to stay alive. Now that's a life on the edge.

We've all led raucous lives, some of them inside, some of them out. But only the poem you leave behind is what's important. Everyone knows this.

What I can say is that it was clear to many of us that an indigenous African literary renaissance was overdue. A major objective was to challenge stereotypes, myths, and the image of ourselves and our continent, and to recast them through stories- prose, poetry, essays, and books for our children. That was my overall goal.

THIS IS IMPORTANT REALLY A poem should never be longer than two lines. That was the first and this is the second.

Did you know that a lot of Emily Dickinson's poems can be sung to the theme from Gilligan's Island? Not kidding, this is totally legit.

In England, we'd leave school at 15 and go on to a college, and I went to further education in a town called Welling Garden City. I fully immersed myself in bohemia there, which included poetry and modern art, jazz, philosophy, social radicalism.