Quotes About Perspective

There has been a vast output of critical studies in contemporary poetry, some of them first rate, but I do not think that , as a rule, a poet should read them.

History is still in large measure poetry to me.

Literary poetry in a painter is something special, and is neither illustration nor the translation of writing by form.

I always thought that writing poetry was in itself a political act.

What did you think, that joy / was some slight thing?

If what has happened in the one person were communicated directly to the other, all art would collapse, all the effects of art would disappear.

The poet may say or sing, not as things were, but as they ought to have been; but the historian must pen them, not as they ought to have been, but as they really were.

Truth can never be told so as to be understood and not be believed.

However, poetry does not live solely in books or in school anthologies.

for what is the gift of the poet and the artist except to see the sights which others cannot see and to hear the sounds that others cannot hear?

It is part of my creed that the only poetry is history, could we tell it right.

Poetry has no investment in anything besides openness. It's not arguing a point. It's creating an environment.

Poetry is the enemy of the poem.

Even ivory towers need central heating.

I think poetry can help children deal with the other subjects on the curriculum by enabling them to see a subject in a new way.

They say poets write mostly for themselves; if anyone else likes it, well and good, if not, it doesn't matter; certainly, not to me.

Those who are not very concerned with art want poems or pictures to record for them something they already know - as one might want a picture of a place he loves.

It is difficult to get the news from poetry, yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there.

Some of the greatest poetry is revealing to the reader the beauty in something that was so simple you had taken it for granted.

You might as well ask an artist to explain his art, or ask a poet to explain his poem. It defeats the purpose. The meaning is only clear thorough the search.

Poetry is when you make new things familiar and familiar things new

Before you ridicule, remember somebody on a railway platform who seems to be train spotting may actually be writing poetry.

If you call painting dumb poetry, the painter may call poetry blind painting.

I think there's no excuse for the American poetry reader not knowing a good deal about what is going on in the rest of the world.