Quotes About Poetry

All the seven deadly sins are peccadilloes but without three of them, Pride, Lust, and Sloth, poetry might never have been born.

Poetry is not a civilizer, rather the reverse, for great poetry appeals to the most primitive instincts.

The best poems take long journeys. I like poetry best that journeys--while remaining in the human scale--to the other world, which may be a place as easily overlooked as a bee's wing

Conscious writing can be the death of poetry.

Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.

That is what poetry can do. It speaks to us of what does not exist, which is not only better than what exists, but even more like the truth.

Verses which do not teach men new and moving truths do not deserve to be read.

The poetry that sustains me is when I feel that, for a minute, the clouds have parted and I've seen ecstasy or something

It is never what a poem says that matters, but what it is.

The poetry of earth is never dead When all the birds are faint with the hot sun, And hide I cooling trees, a voice will run From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead.

The unconscious mind writes poetry if it's left alone.

To elevate the soul, poetry is necessary.

A poem is really a kind of machine for producing the poetic state by means of words.

Only in Russia poetry is respected - it gets people killed.

But he cannot see a connection between the end of yearning and the end of poetry. Is that what growing up amounts to: growing out of yearning, of passion, of all intensities of the soul?

Sometimes poetry, it is incomprehensible. But we need incomprehensible stuff! It is very healthy to talk about incomprehensible things! It is very healthy! We need it!

Painting is silent poetry.

Everything since Homer has improved, except poetry.

A poet's autobiography is his poetry. Anything else can only be a footnote.

I think that in the process of writing, all kinds of unexpected things happen that shift the poet away from his plan and that these accidents are really what we mean when we talk about poetry.

You must be careful not to deprive the poem of its wild origin.

Poetry is the sister of Sorrow. Every man that suffers and weeps is a poet; every tear is a verse, and every heart a poem.

Here let dead poetry rise once more to life.

The chaos of the mind cannot constitute a reply to the providence of the universe. All it can be is an awakening in the night, where all that can be heard is anguished poetry let loose.