Quotes About Poetry

I wrote a lot of poetry in the last two years of high school, all about the same girl I was in love with. That was pretty awful. Did you know that in poetry, every line does not need to rhyme?

Shakespeare has been praised in English more than anything mortal except poetry itself. Fame exhausts thought in his eulogy.

I've always felt that a really good joke, a really good one-liner, is a really good line of poetry. It's imagistic, it's compact, there is a rhythm to it.

Poems are my link with the times, with the new life of my people.

Much contemporary verse reads like failed short-short stories rather than failed poetry.

I bless the gods for not letting my education in rhetoric, poetry, and other literary studies come easily to me, and thereby sparing me from an absorbing interest in these subjects.

poetry ... is another way to be hurled straight into the heart of God.

Zeal is not of necessity religion, neither is it always of the same essence with poetry or patriotism.

Oh, I wish I organized my books. But I don't. I'm not an organized person. The best I can do is put the books I really like in one sort of general area, and poetry in another.

Poetry is the art of understanding what it is to be alive.

I think that to transfuse emotion - not to transmit thought but to set up in the reader's sense a vibration corresponding to what was felt by the writer - is the peculiar function of poetry.

think what you hope for is that at different times of your life you're able to write the poetry that reflects the moment that you're in on your own journey.

I myself always want to talk about "poetry," not "the poem."

I love indices! They are poetry in and of themselves, depending on the book.

All the senses awaken and fall into harmony in poetic reverie. Poetic reverie listens to this polyphony of the senses, and the poetic consciousness must record it.

Poetry can't cure cancer, but it can save your life until you die.

I always feel vulnerable talking about the poetry aspect of my career because it's little diary entries that I need to sometimes close read, and to reveal that much, it's a bit nerve-racking.

For though, in nature, depth and height Are equally held infinite: In poetry, the height we know; 'Tis only infinite below.

When I took my first poetry class, I felt that I could understand the relationships between words and the formal qualities of language in a way I would never understand music.

I thought of rhyme alone, For rhyme can beat a measure out of trouble And make the daylight sweet once more.

I exaggerate. I oversimplify. I generalize. But there's no cynicism here. American poetry is a mess. Long live American poetry.

Poetry is a diary kept by a sea creature who lives on land and wishes he could fly.

We saw a hole in the Chicago poetry scene that slam couldn't fill. I think a lot more can be done with the form than just competition.

Poetry is a break for freedom.