Quotes About Poetry

Hands, that the rod of empire might have sway'd,Or wak'd to ecstasy the living lyre.

No art form points like poetry to this originality of language as to its essential and abiding concern.

One learned gentleman, "a sage grave man," Talk'd of the Ghost in Hamlet, "sheath'd in steel"— His well-read friend, who next to speak began, Said, "That was poetry, and nothing real;" A third, of more extensive learning, ran To Sir George Villiers' Ghost, and Mrs. Veal; Of sheeted Spectres spoke with shorten'd breath, And thrice he quoted Drelincourt on Death.

Why then I'll fit you, say no more.When I was young, I gave my mindAnd plied myself to fruitless poetry:Which though it profit the professor naughtYet it is passing pleasing to the world.

Ancient sculpture is the true school of modesty. But where the Greeks had modesty, we have cant; where they had poetry, we have cant; where they had patriotism, we have cant; where they had anything that exalts, delights, or adorns humanity, we have nothing but cant, cant, cant.

No poem ever bought a hamburger, or not too many.

So I suppose poetry, language, the shaping of it, was and remains for me an effort to make sense out of essentially senseless situations.

But poetry is a way of language, it is not its subject or its maker's background or interests or hobbies or fixations. It is nearer to utterance than history.

For a lot of people, poetry tends to be dull. It's not read much. It takes a special kind of training and a lot of practice to read poetry with pleasure. It's like learning to like asparagus.

Solitude gives birth to the original in us, to beauty unfamiliar and perilous - to poetry. But it also gives birth to the opposite: to the perverse, the illicit, the absurd.

Solitude gives birth to the original in us, to beauty unfamiliar and perilous - to poetry. But also, it gives birth to the opposite: to the perverse, the illicit, the absurd.

Solitude produces originality, bold and astonishing beauty, poetry. But solitude also produces perverseness, the disproportianate, the absurd and the forbidden.

Solitude produces originality, bold & astonishing beauty, poetry. But solitude also produces perverseness, the disproportionate, the absurd, and the forbidden.

Faintly as tolls the evening chime,Our voices keep tune and our oars keep time.

When we relate to our bodies as having soul, we attend to their beauty, their poetry and their expressiveness. Our very habit of treating the body as a machine, whose muscles are like pulleys and its organs engines, forces its poetry underground, so that we experience the body as an instrument and see its poetics only in illness.

Fapt este ca termenul "profet", caruia epocile ulterioare i-au atribuit un nou sens, era cuvantul biblic penru "poet", iar cuvantul a "profeti" insemna arta de a face poezie. Insemna, de asemenea, arta de a interpreta poezie dupa melodia oricarui instrument muzical.

When Wilde composed his works he surrounded himself with books. A friend remembered him writing a poem 'with a botanical work in front of him from which he . . . [selected] the names of flowers most pleasing to the ear to plant in his garden of verse'.5 Aubrey Beardsley's caricature of Wilde, 'Oscar Wilde at Work', shows the author at his desk surrounded by mountains of books.

Even speech was for them was a debased form of silence; how much more futile is poetry which is a debased form of speech.

I will miss you, he said, and his words was both honey and poison, sun and moon in the same sky.

Most people can't tell now who wrote what. I like that blurring of identities within the band. because it becomes a unified thing that can't be related to other forms of historical poetry.

The Girl With Many Eyes One day in the park I had quite a surprise. I met a girl who had many eyes. She was really quite pretty (and also quite shocking!) and I noticed she had a mouth, so we ended up talking. We talked about flowers, and her poetry classes, and the problems she'd have if she ever wore glasses. It's great to know a girl who has so many eyes, but you really get wet when she breaks down and cries.

Against her ankles as she trod The lucky buttercups did nod.

I read pretty eclectically - fiction, non-fiction, and poetry - and I've been inspired and influenced by a number of writers.

My work is based upon contemporary Greek poetry - poetry which is concerned with the problems of today's civilization and, of course, with simple personal feelings of love, nostalgia, etc.