Quotes About Art

Writing poetry is talking to oneself; yet it is a mode of talking to oneself in which the self disappears; and the product's something that, though it may not be for everybody, is about everybody.

Only poetry can address grief.

I have had much to learn from Sweden's poetry and, more especially, from her lyrics of the last generation.

I want a poem which is made of compression, passion, precision, symmetry, & disruption.

Confession may well be a dirty word in poetry.

Poetry and prison have always been neighbors.

Actually, I didn't study photography at first. I went to school for painting my first year, poetry my second year, graphic design my third and fourth year, and photography my fifth.

Verses devoid of substance, melodious trifles. [Lat., Versus inopes rerum, nugaeque canorae.]

Literature is always something - it is either story or poetry, ideally both. That is, you always know what it is and even if the interpretation is not available, the experience of language is.

I'd rather call prose poems something else, for clarity - something like "poetic prose," prose that contains a quality of poetry, but not poems.

More people than ever are slowly but surely turning their ears toward poetry

Poetry uses language to create a music borne inside human experiences and emotions.

I allow no hot-beds in the gardens of Parnassus.

The manifestation of poetry in external life is formal perfection. True sentiment grows within, and art must represent internal phenomena externally.

Prose and poetry are as different as food and drink.

I go to a lot of museums, I read a ton of poetry - anything that's a creative expression of oneself, I find really inspiring.

There is a certain flimsiness of poetry which seems expedient in a song.

I don't believe in tame poetry. . . . Poetry busts guts.

There's very little of the intentional about the business of writing poetry, as least as far as I can see.

For my part, if I consider poetry as an object, I maintain that it is born of the necessity of adding a vocal sound (speech) to the hammering of the first tribal music.

Poetry doesn't function by saying things straightforwardly because the language is too imprecise, too limited often, to address the underlying subject of most poems.

Poetry -- even bad poetry -- may be our final hope.

Often when I write poetry I don't quite know what I'm saying myself. I mean, I can't restate the poem. The meaning of the poem is the poem.

The essence of poetry is will and passion.