Quotes About Poetry

It doesn't mean - she shrugged. It just is - like a poem.

It doesn't mean, she shrugged. It just is - like a poem.

Poetry is the elder sister of history, the mother of language, the ancestress of civilization.

"Spring has returned. The Earth is like a child that knows poems."

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

No Spring nor Summer beauty hath such grace As I have seen in one Autumnal face.

Everyone is a poet at 16, but how many are poets at 50? Generally, people seem to get more conservative as they age, but in my case, I seem to have gotten more radical.

Through the ingenuousness of her age beamed an ardent mind, a mind not of the women but of the poet; she did not please, she intoxicated.

Feeling indisposed towards the evening, I drove up the ancient plains. The setting sun is unspeakably beautiful, Only it is approaching nightfall.

Most poetry in the modern age has retreated to the private sphere, turning its back on the political realm.

Maybe it is something to do with age, but I have become fonder of poetry than of prose.

Virgil and Horace [were] the severest writers of the severest age.

I became a poet at the age of sixteen. I did not intend to do it. It was not my fault.

I alone of English writers have consciously set myself to make music out of what I may call the sound of sense.

Poetry is in itself strength and joy, whether it be crowned by all mankind, or left alone in its own magic hermitage.

the comfort of reclusion, the poetry of hibernation

I was a tiny bug. Now a mountain. I was left behind. Now honored at the head. You healed my wounded hunger and anger, and made me a poet who sings about joy.

Did the poet use red to symbolize blood? Anger? Lust? Or is the wheelbarrow simply red because red sounded better than black?

Accept what comes from silence. Make the best you can of it. Of the little words that come out of the silence, like prayers prayed back to the one who prays, make a poem that does not disturb the silence from which it came.

There is nothing very instructive, for example, in hearing that "the cow jumped over the moon," but who is not delighted by that poem's exuberant indifference to the possibility of making sense? It is a masterpiece. Even so, I am happy to know that some poems delight and instruct, which is a richer possibility.

Despair leads to boredom, electronic games, computer hacking, poetry and other bad habits.

Accept what comes from silence. Make the best you can of it. Of the little words that come out of the silence, like prayers prayed back to the one who prays, make a poem that does not disturb the silence from which it came. — Wendell Berry, from "How To Be a Poet," Given . (Counterpoint March 1, 2006) Originally published 2005.

As Plato said, all poets are liars. This does not mean we should mistrust them.

T. S. Eliot, who remarked in one of his essays that immature poets imitate, mature poets steal).