Quotes About Art

It is always hard for poets to believe that one says their poems are bad not because one is a fiend but because their poems are bad.

One must write poetry in such as way that if one threw the poem in a window, the pane would break.

Music straightjackets a poem and prevents it from breathing on its own, whereas it liberates a lyric. Poetry doesn't need music; lyrics do.

Where there are many beauties in a poem I shall not cavil at a few faults proceeding either from negligence or from the imperfection of our nature.

Poetry's object is truth.

Poetry is the language of extremity. Poetry is a transfer of potency. You feel something potent and then you transfer it onto the page.

What can be explained is not poetry.

Poetry is a string of words that parades without a permit.

I myself have never called what I write anti-poetry. I also think that my poetry should not be only known as the poetry of Ernesto Cardenal but rather as Nicaraguan poetry.

I feel the written word, poetry and literature is just one of the most beautiful things that human beings do. So we have to fight for it.

Poetry, whose material is language, is perhaps the most human and least worldly of the arts, the one in which the end product remains closest to the thought that inspired it.

Poetry is the disease of the brain.

A poet dares be just so clear and no clearer... He unzips the veil from beauty, but does not remove it. A poet utterly clear is a trifle glaring.

An age which is incapable of poetry is incapable of any kind of literature except the cleverness of a decadence.

Poetry is just so emo." he said. "Oh, the pain. The pain. It always rains. In my soul.

I still believe in the need for guitars and drums and desperate poetry.

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

It is barbaric to write poetry after Auschwitz.

Poetry is a kind of ingenious nonsense.

Artistic simplicity is more complex than artistic complexity for it arises via the simplification of the latter and against its backdrop or system.

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

Those blessed structures, plot and rhyme-- why are they no help to me now I want to make something imagined, not recalled?

Poetry is the one thing that isn't contaminated, the one thing that isn't part of the game.

McGough: I'm sorry. I'm afraid I've caught poetry. Mr Bones: Oh really? Well, don't worry, sir - I used to suffer from short stories. McGough: Really? When? Mr Bones: Oh, once upon a time...