Quotes About Poetry

Still, language is resilient, and poetry when it is pressured simply goes underground.

I see people who talk about America, and then undermine it by not paying attention to its soul, to its poetry. I see polarization, reductionism and superficiality.

I think my poems are slightly underrated by the word 'accessible.'

When I first heard Bob Dylan, I'll be honest, I didn't like him. But I was shallow of mind and didn't understand the poetry. I just judged him on his singing and his guitar playing.

Dealing with poetry is a daunting task, simply because the reason one does it as an editor at all is because one is constantly coming to terms with one's own understanding of how to understand the world.

Poetry should be able to reach everybody, and it should be able to appeal to all levels of understanding.

Poetry doesn't necessarily need to be some erudite thing. Your mom telling you a story is just as much poetry as some old 17th century thing that no one really understands. I think that those boundaries should be broken down!

The idea that a poem was a made thing stayed with me, and I decided then that I wanted to be an artist, not just a diarist. So I put myself through a kind of apprenticeship in writing poetry, and I understood even then that my practice as a poet was deeply related to my reading.

One thing I do know is that poetry, to be understood, must be clear.

I think it was T.S. Eliot who talked about good poetry being felt before it's understood. I believe that. There are some bands where I love their lyrics but I don't have a clue what they're on about.

I have been in love with Emily Dickinson's poetry since I was 13, and, like an anonymous post on findagrave.com says, 'Dear Emily - I hope I have understood.' Emily's poems are sometimes difficult, often abstract, on occasion flippant, but her mind is inside them.

When I was in college, I wrote poetry very seriously, and then once I had started writing short stories, I didn't go back to poetry, partially because I felt like I understood how incredibly difficult it was.

Traditional matter must be glorified, since it would be easier to listen to the re-creation of familiar stories than to quite new and unexpected things; the listeners, we must remember, needed poetry chiefly as the re-creation of tired hours.

My poetry is me trying to reconcile my own life and opportunities I've had with opportunities my students aren't given and how profoundly unfair that is.

I know the sag of the unfinished poem. And I know the release of the poem that is finished.

I write... sonnets... and writing sonnets is boring. You have to find rhymes; you have to write hendecasyllables; so after a while, I get bored and my drawer is overflowing with unfinished short poems.

To write good poems is the secret of brevity.

Does poem also walk through the valleys seeking tongues from dandelions?

When in love, every soul becomes a poet.

I think poetry without metaphor is like husband and wife living in separate bedrooms.

I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.

Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you/ That you may be my poem/ I whisper with my lips close to your ear/ I have loved many women and men, but I love none better than you.

The poetic element lying hidden in most women is the source of their magnetic attraction.

The poetic notion of infinity is far greater than that which is sponsored by any creed.