Quotes About Poetry

My verses are my diary. My poetry is a poetry of proper names.

Poetry is a dumb Buddha who thinks a donkey is as important as a diamond.

I believe that the short story is as different a form from the novel as poetry is, and the best stories seem to me to be perhaps closer in spirit to poetry than to novels.

One cannot simply decide to write apolitical poetry, in the way one decides to drink lemonade instead of tea, it's far more subliminal than that.

And all poets love dust and mist because all the last answers. Go running back to dust and mist.

The poetry is the Earth, charming; The river, flowing from lofty mountains; Nature, a young woman and a heavenly plant with blossoming flowers, slinking in the garden of the mind.

The greatest poem ever known Is one all poets have outgrown: The poetry, innate, untold, Of being only four years old.

Poetry is the establishment of a metaphorical link between white butterfly-wings and the scraps of torn-up love-letters.

Poetry teaches the enormous force of a few words, and, in proportion to the inspiration, checks loquacity.

An English poet writes, I think, just for people who are interested in poetry. An American poet writes, and feels that everyone ought to appreciate this. Then he has a deep sense of grievance . . .

Poetry, like love, is something we never truly say goodbye to.

One of the most important differences I see between prose and poetry is the music of the language.

When I really want to be soothed and reminded of why people bother to fiddle with sentences, I often read poetry.

If we are moved by a poem, it has meant something, perhaps something important, to us; if we are not moved, then it is, as poetry, meaningless.

If I could get that girl [Courtney Love] to publish her poetry, the world would change.

We always cut our poetical theories to suit our talent.

Nos beaux sentiments ne sont-ils pas les poe sies de la volonte ? Aren't our best feelings poetry of the will?

To read a poem with no thought in mind but to paraphrase it into a single, simple and usually high-minded prose statement is the destruction of poetry.

Fiction is in danger of becoming a kind of poetry. Only other poets read it. Only other fiction writers care about it.

Prose is a photography, poetry is a painting in oil-colors.

My business is words. Words are like labels, or coins, or better, like swarming bees.

Get rid of words and meaning, and there is still poetry.

It would be nice if all the Republicans could put poetry in a little box and put the box under the bed and sit on it, but they can't.

Poetry relishes ripe fruit - but ripe is one thing and overripe quite another. That's something poetry doesn't like, so it couldn't care less if I were to fall overripe to the ground.