quotes about Poetry Is
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Good religious poetry... is likely to be most justly appreciated and most discriminately relished by the undevout.
-- A. E. Housman -
In the total darkness, poetry is still there, and it is there for you.
-- Abbas Kiarostami -
Most people ignore most poetry because most poetry ignores most people.
-- Adrian MitchellSource : Poems (1964) p. 8
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There is nothing at all that can be talked about adequately, and the whole art of poetry is to say what can't be said.
-- Alan Watts -
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Writing poetry is what I am. I wouldn’t know what else to be.
-- Alice NotleySource : "A Quick Interview With Alice Notley". Interview with Corey Zeller, ampersandreview.com. May 11, 2014.
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Poetry is music, and nothing but music. Words with musical emphasis.
-- Amiri Baraka -
(...) the translator of prose is the slave of the author and the translator of poetry is his rival.
-- Andreï MakineSource : "Dreams of My Russian Summers". Book by Andreï Makine, September 6, 1995.
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Poetry is the only hopeEven if you do not believe it, you have to do it.
-- Andrei Voznesensky -
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I will never cease advising my friends and enemies to read poetry before anything.
-- Arnold Bennett -
For women, then, poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence.
-- Audre Lorde -
Poetry is the purest form of insanity.
-- Augusta Jane Evans -
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Poetry is the fiery index to the genius of the age.
-- Babette Deutsch -
...the trouble with poetry is that it encourages the writing of more poetry...
-- Billy CollinsSource : Billy Collins (2012). “The Trouble with Poetry and Other Poems”, p.85, Pan Macmillan
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Poetry is as vital to thinking as knowledge.
-- Brooks Atkinson -
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Poetry seems especially like nothing else so much as itself. Poetry is not like, it is the very lining of the inner life.
-- C.D. WrightSource : C.D. Wright (2012). “Cooling Time: An American Poetry Vigil”, p.59, Copper Canyon Press
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I've written some poetry I don't understand myself.
-- Carl Sandburg -
Poetry is a search for syllables to shoot at the barriers of the unknown and the unknowable.
-- Carl Sandburg -
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Poetry is what happens when nothing else can.
-- Charles Bukowski -
The purpose of poetry is to remind us / how difficult it is to remain just one person...
-- Czeslaw Milosz -
American poetry is a mess. Long live American poetry.
-- David Biespiel -
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Poetry is an art spoken, as if sung, in relation to other human beings.
-- David BiespielSource : ""David Biespiel's poetry wire: a scream of consciousness". therumpus.net. February 17, 2015.
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Poetry is plucking at the heartstrings, and making music with them.
-- Dennis Gabor -
Poetry is the art of saying what you mean but disguising it.
-- Diane Wakoski -
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Poetry begins where language starts: in the shadows and accidents of one person’s life.
-- Eavan BolandSource : Eavan Boland (2012). “A Journey With Two Maps: Becoming a Woman Poet”, p.6, Carcanet
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To elevate the soul, poetry is necessary.
-- Edgar Allan Poe -
Stylized acting and direction is to realistic acting and direction as poetry is to prose.
-- Elia Kazan -
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I started with poetry because it was direct, immediate, and short. It was the ecstasy of striking matches in the dark.
-- Erica Jong -
The true subject of poetry is the loss of the beloved.
-- Faiz Ahmad Faiz -
He drove his mind into the abyss where poetry is written.
-- George Orwell -
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Poetry is when words are robbed of their attributed truth.
-- Gunter BrusSource : "Nervous Stillness on the Horizon". Book by Günter Brus, Monika Faber, Actar, 2005.
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Why speak of the use of poetry? Poetry is what uses us.
-- Hayden CarruthSource : Hayden Carruth (2006). “Toward the Distant Islands: New & Selected Poems”, p.25, Copper Canyon Press
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Poetry is the overflowing of the Soul.
-- Henry Theodore Tuckerman -
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We all need ways to express ourselves, and poetry is one of mine.
-- Jack Prelutsky -
The reason we go to poetry is not for wisdom, but for the dismantling of wisdom
-- Jacques Lacan -
Poetry is philosophy's sister, the one that wears makeup.
-- Jennifer Grotz -
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Gil Thorpe is a great diversion and is to book writing as poetry is to prose.
-- Jerry B. Jenkins -
Poetry is adolescence fermented, and thus preserved.
-- Jose Ortega y Gasset -
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Poetry is what is gained in translation.
-- Joseph BrodskySource : "Raw Material by Derek Mahon - review" by Aingeal Clare, www.theguardian.com. February 3, 2012.
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Poetry is rather an approach to things, to life, than it is typographical production.
-- Joseph Brodsky -
Poetry is to be found nowhere unless we carry it within us.
-- Joseph Joubert -
If food is poetry, is not poetry also food?
-- Joyce Carol Oates -
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Women do not have as great a need for poetry because their own essence is poetry.
-- Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel -
If epic poetry is a definite species, the sagas do not fall within it.
-- Lascelles Abercrombie -
Poetry is the art of using language to transcend language,
-- Laurence Overmire -
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Poetry is what happens when an anxiety meets a technique.
-- Lawrence Durrell -
Poetry is the breath of beauty.
-- Leigh HuntSource : Leigh Hunt (1847). “Fiction and matter of fact. Inside of an omnibus. Day of the disasters of Carlington Blundell. Visit to the zoological gardens. A man introduced to his ancestors. Novel party. Beds and bedrooms. World of books. Jack Abbott's breakfast. On seeing a pigeon make love. Month of May. The Giuli tre. Few remarks on the cure vice called lying. Criticism on female beauty. Of deceased statesmen who have written verses. Female sovereigns of England”, p.249
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Poetry is something in-between the dream and its interpretation.
-- Lou Andreas-Salomé -
Poetry is often generations in advance of the thought of its time.
-- Louise BoganSource : Louise Bogan (1970). “A Poet's Alphabet: Reflections on the Literary Art and Vocation”, New York : McGraw-Hill
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Poetry is a matter of life, not just a matter of language.
-- Lucille Clifton -
The importance of poetry is not measured, finally, by what the poet says but by how he says it.
-- Mahmoud Darwish -
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I like poetry when I don't quite understand why I like it. Poetry isn't just a question of wrapping something up and giving it to someone else to unwrap. It just doesn't work like that.
-- Mark Haddon -
Poetry is the least imposition on silence in a world of chatter.
-- Marvin Bell -
Prose is prose because of what it includes; poetry is poetry because of what it leaves out.
-- Marvin BellSource : Marvin Bell (1994). “A Marvin Bell reader: selected poetry and prose”, University Press of New England
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Poetry is sentimental to begin with. To write a sentimental poem is an act of redundancy.
-- Mary Ruefle -
Poetry is simply the most beautiful, impressive, and widely effective mode of saying things.
-- Matthew ArnoldSource : Matthew Arnold (2013). “Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold (Illustrated)”, p.689, Delphi Classics
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Poetry is music written for the human voice.
-- Maya Angelou -
The gap between verse and poetry is enormous. Between good poetry and good prose the gap is much narrower
-- Michael Longley -
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The demand that poetry be immediately understandable to everyone is truly absurd.
-- Mieczyslaw Jastrun -
The fear of poetry is an indication that we are cut off from our own reality.
-- Muriel Rukeyser -
Poetry is, above all, an approach to the truth of feeling.
-- Muriel Rukeyser -
The act of making poetry is an act of hope.
-- Natasha Trethewey -
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Poetry is what makes the invisible appear.
-- Nathalie Sarraute -
Poetry is prose in slow motion.
-- Nicholson BakerSource : Nicholson Baker (2009). “The Anthologist: A Novel”, p.9, Simon and Schuster
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And the second question, can poetry be taught? I didn't think so.
-- Norman MacCaig -
Poetry is not truth, it is the resurrection of presences.
-- Octavio PazSource : Octavio Paz, Eliot Weinberger, G. Aroul (1984). “Selected Poems”, p.118, New Directions Publishing
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Only in Russia poetry is respected--it gets people killed.
-- Osip MandelstamSource : "Hope Against Hope: A Memoir". Book by Nadezhda Mandelstam (Chapter 35), 1970.
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Poetry is a sword of lightning, ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley -
Poetry is either language lit up by life or life lit up by language
-- Peter Porter -
Poetry is always close kin to the impossible, isn't it?
-- Reginald ShepherdSource : Reginald Shepherd (2007). “Orpheus in the Bronx: Essays on Identity, Politics, and the Freedom of Poetry”
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Poetry's always dead, you know? You don't realize how good poetry is until 15 years later.
-- Richard HellSource : "Christopher Wool & Richard Hell". www.interviewmagazine.com. November 18, 2008.
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Poetry is what is lost in translation. It is also what is lost in interpretation.
-- Robert Frost -
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If a poem is not memorable, there's probably something wrong. One of the problems of free verse is that much of the free verse poetry is not memorable.
-- Robert Morgan -
Poetry is the one thing that isn't contaminated, the one thing that isn't part of the game.
-- Roberto Bolano -
Poetry is so vital to us until school spoils it.
-- Russell Baker -