Quotes About Poetry

A work of art is essentially the internal made external, resulting from a creative process operating under the impulse of feeling, and embodying the combined product of the poet's perceptions, thoughts, and feelings. The primary source and subject matter of a poem, therefore, are the attributes and actions of the poet's own mind; or of if aspects of the external world, then these only as they are converted from fact to poetry by the feelings and operations of the poet's mind.

I remember once reading about Sylvia Plath. She was a young divorcee with two small children when she wrote some of her best poetry—at 4 or 5 A.M., before the kids woke. That's how much she wanted it.

Reading a piece of poetry with no beat in front of 20 people is way more challenging than rocking for 10 000 people.

I wondered: what happens when a hundred thousand people memorize the same poem? Does anything change?

What happens when a hundred thousand people memorize the same poem? Does anything change?

She told me I possessed what every great mathematician required, an excellent memory and a sense of poetry. I felt she saw into me, past every façade and flourish, and that the more she knew me, the more she loved me. I was too young, then, to know how lasting this kind of love is, how rarely it comes into one's life, how difficult it is to accept oneself, let alone another. I carried this security--Ai-ming's love, the love of an older sister--out of my childhood and into my adult life.

When acquaintances met him on the road, Wen said he couln't stop to discuss the Communists or Nationalists, Stalin, Truman or the weather, because he was composing a six-character eight line regulated verse in his head, and any variation in his path wuld push the words out of order. It was a lie. In fact, he was empty of poetry a d afraid of words.

Diane St. John had once said he looked as if he would speak in poetry, should he ever deign to speak at all.

Later, years later, I would hear a song made of our meeting. [...] I was not surprised by the portrait of myself: the proud witch undone before the hero's sword, kneeling and begging for mercy. Humbling women seems to me a chief pastime of poets. As if there can be no story unless we crawl and weep.

Death's Brother is the name that poets give to sleep. For most men those dark hours are a reminder of the stillness that waits at the end of days.

Some had a whole epic, others just a verse

It was easy to see how such lovely things might become songs.

He was beautiful - like a god, the poets would say.

1] God have mercy on the sinner Who must write with no dinner, No gravy and no grub, No pewter and no pub, No bellyand no bowels, Only consonants and vowels. 2] But we moderns are impatient and destructive 3] And how can poetry stand up against its new conditions? Its position is perfectly precarious. 4] In all the good Greek of Plato I lack my roastbeef and potato. A better man was Aristotle, Pulling steady on the bottle.

But is this not what poetry must do? To say the nothing that cannot be said?

tomes on the meaning of life. Poets and playwrights were

so meer Poets and meer Musicians, are as sottish as meer Drunkards are, who live in a continuall mist without seeing, or judgeing any thing clearly. A man should be learn'd in severall Sciences, and should have a rea?sonable Philosophicall, and ni some measure a Mathematicall head; to be a compleat and excellent Poet

Music is the exultation of Poetry. Both of them may excel apart but... are most excellent when they are joined.

When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.

If more politicians knew poetry, and more poets knew politics, I am convinced the world would be a little better place in which to live.

When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.

When power narrows the areas of a man's concerns, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence

Jika politik itu kotor, puisi akan membersihkannya. Jika politik bengkok, sastra akan meluruskannya.

When power leads man towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses, for art establishes the basic human truths which must serve as the touchstones of our judgement. ~ JFK