Quotes About Poetry

I walk down the garden paths, And all the daffodils Are blowing, and the bright blue squills. I walk down the patterned garden-paths In my stiff, brocaded gown. With my powdered hair, and jewelled fan, I too am a rare Pattern. As I wander down The garden paths.

Tell me, Was Venus more beautiful Than you are, When she topped The crinkled waves, Drifting shoreward On her plaited shell? Was Botticelli?s vision Fairer than mine; And were the painted rosebuds He tossed his lady Of better worth Than the words I blow about you To cover your too great loveliness As with a gauze Of misted silver?

You are cold and flame. You are the crimson of amaryllis, The silver of moon-touched magnolias. When I am with you, My heart is a frozen pond Gleaming with agitated torches.

Now you are come! You tremble like a star Poised where, behind earth's rim, the sun has set. Your voice has sung across my heart, but numb And mute, I have no tones to answer.

Without poetry the soul and heart of man starves and dies.

When trying to explain anything, I usually find that the Bible, that great collection of magnificent and varied poetry, has said it before in the best possible way.

Poets are always the advance guard of literature; the advance guard of life. It is for this reason that their recognition comes so slowly.

Taking us by and large, we're a queer lot We women who write poetry. And when you think How few of us there've been, it's queerer still. I wonder what it is that makes us do it, Singles us out to scribble down, man-wise, The fragments of ourselves.

Let us be thankful that there is no court by which we can be excluded from our share in the inheritance of the great poets of all ages and countries, to which our simple humanity entitles us.

The petals numbered but degrade to prose Summer's triumphant poem of the rose.

Poets so their verses write, Heap them full of life and light, And then fling them to the rude Mumbling of the multitude.

Love seems to beautify and inspire all nature. It raises the earthly caterpillar into the ethereal butterfly, it paints the feathers in spring, it lights the glowworm's lamp, it wakens the song of birds, and inspires the poet's lay. Even inanimate Nature seems to feel the spell, and flowers glow with the richest colours.

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These men seem not to know that poetry has its particular rules and precepts; and that history is governed by others directly opposite.

Dopo i politici e i poeti mi rivolsi agli artisti e indovinate che cosa scoprii? Che costoro, coscienti di esercitare bene la propria professione, pensavano di essere sapienti anche in altre cose, magari più importanti e difficili.

don't write out of what I know; I write out of what I wonder. I think most artists create art in order to explore, not to give the answers. Poetry and art are not about answers to me; they are about questions.

People wish to be poets more than they wish to write poetry, and that's a mistake. One should wish to celebrate more than one wishes to be celebrated.

I am a black woman poet and I sound like one.

her dangling braids the color of rain.

Poetry is a matter of life, not just a matter of language.

when you lie awake in the evenings counting your birthdays turn the blood that clots on your tongue into poems. poems. from "The Message of Thelma Sayles

On a dark theme I trace verses full of light, touching all the muses' charm.

Poetry is like a beef bouillon cube; it's hardly ever needed (or perhaps never needed at all); it sits in its precious wrapper, well out of view, until everyone has forgotten it's there.

We are wholly alone in the evening gloom. And my fingers are warm like the lost days of June. — Joseph Brodsky, from "Evening," Joseph Brodsky: Selected Poems , trans. George L. Kline (Harper & Row, 1973)