Quotes About Poetry

Could I come near your beauty with my nails, I could set my ten commandments in your face.

But now my gracious numbers are decay'd, And my sick muse doth give another place. I grant, sweet love, thy lovely argument Deserves the travail of a worthier pen;

Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.

Then my heart with pleasure fills And dances with the daffodils.

Ideally, poetry in translation should one day lead a reader to a reading of the poem in the original tongue. The poem in its native phonemes, we often forget, was primarily a poem, and a good one, presumably, if chosen for translation. A poem in translation should be faithful, if to anything, to this primary quality of the original—that of its being an effective poem.

Somehow, even the slightest words and phrases of Sappho yield her voice.

Her time-scissored work is not quite language poetry, but a more joyful cousin of the eternal scant-garde, which is always and never new. So Sappho is ancient and, for a hundred reasons, modern.

le spalle simili al bianco cuore di un fiore. [...]

Qualcuno - un poeta latino - aveva scritto che l'eternità consisteva nel trattenere e possedere la pienezza della vita in un unico istante, nel qui e nell'ora, il passato, il presente e il futuro

What was the matter with him? No sense of humor to leaven life? Must every act be dead serious, a weight upon his head and hands? Loving was a recreation; all the poets sang of its lightness, its levity. Only the dull clod raised barriers of creed or conscience.

Este método de vida respondía exactamente a las máximas del poeta Blake: «Pensar por la mañana, actuar al mediodía, comer por la tarde y dormir por la noche».

Whatever inspiration is, it's born from a continuous I don't know....That is why I value that little phrase I don't know so highly. It's small, but it flies on mighty wings. It expands our lives to include spaces within us as well as the outer expanses in which our tiny Earth hangs suspended...Poets, if they're genuine, must always keep repeating I don't know.

I've wanted to write about them for a long while, but it's a tricky subject, always put off for later and perhaps worthy of a better poet, even more stunned by the world than I. But time is short. I write.

But in the language of poetry, where every word is weighed, nothing is usual or normal. Not a single stone and not a single cloud above it.

We all use phrases such as 'the ordinary world,' 'ordinary life,' 'the ordinary course of events.' But in the language of poetry, nothing is usual or normal. Not a single stone and not a single cloud above it. Not a single day and not a single night after it. And above all, not a single existence, not anyone's existence in this world.

So poets keep on trying, and sooner or later the consecutive results of their self-dissatisfaction are clipped together with a giant paperclip by literary historians and called their "oeuvres." I

I've wanted to write about them for a long while, but it's a tricky subject, always put off for later and perhaps worthy of a better poet, even more stunned by the world than I. But time is short. I write.

We, too, can divide ourselves, it's true. / But only into flesh and a broken whisper. / Into flesh and poetry.

Even poetry has its prosaic side.

Wczoraj, kiedy Twoje imiÄ™ ktoÅ› wymówiÅ' przy mnie gÅ'oÅ›no, to poczuÅ'am jakby ró?a przez otwarte wpadÅ'a okno.

My identifying features are rapture and despair.

Read good poetry and read it well, tracing the countless incarnations of every word. These are after all the same words lying dead in dictionaries or leading a gray life in speech. Then why do they shine like new in poems, as if the poet had just discovered them?

Poetry (whatever we may say) is, was, and will always be a game. And as very child knows, all games have rules. So why do grown-ups forget?

in daily speech, where we don't stop to consider every word, we all use phrases like the ordinary world, ordinary life, the ordinary course of events ... But in the language of poetry, where every word is weighed, nothing is usual or normal. Not a single stone and not a single cloud above it. Not a single day and not a single night after it. And above all, not a single existence, not anyone's existence in this world.