Motivational Quotes

Poetry and poets

Who among us has not, in moments of ambition, dreamt of the miracle of a form of poetic prose, musical but without rhythm and rhyme, both supple and staccato enough to adapt itself to the lyrical movements of our souls, the undulating movements of our reveries, and the convulsive movements of our consciences? This obsessive ideal springs above all from frequent contact with enormous cities, from the junction of their innumerable connections.

- Baudelaire, Charles

Best Quotes about Poetry and poets

Poetry is either something that lives like fire inside you --like music to the musician or Marxism to the Communist --or else it is nothing, an empty formalized bore around which pedants can endlessly drone their notes and explanations.

A poet can survive anything but a misprint.

Wilde, Oscar

I by no means rank poetry high in the scale of intelligence --this may look like affectation but it is my real opinion. It is the lava of the imagination whose eruption prevents an earthquake.

Byron, Lord

It is with roses and locomotives (not to mention acrobats Spring electricity Coney Island the 4th of July the eyes of mice and Niagara Falls) that my poems are competing.

Cummings, E.E. (Edward. E.)

Poetry makes nothing happen. It survives in the valley of its saying.

Auden, W. H.

Poetry is an art, the easiest to dabble in, but the hardest to reach true excellence.

Stedman, Captain J. G.

The essence of poetry is will and passion.

Hazlitt, William

Spring has returned. The Earth is like a child that knows poems.

Rilke, Rainer Maria

A poem records emotions and moods that lie beyond normal language, that can only be patched together and hinted at metaphorically.

Ackerman, Diane

10.

The job of the poet is to render the world -- to see it and report it without loss, without perversion. No poet ever talks about feelings. Only sentimental people do.

Doren, Mark Van

11.

Baudelaire, Charles

12.

Poetry is the special medium of spiritual crazy wisdom, the form of expression that comes closest to creating a bridge between words and what is wordless.

Nisker, Wes ''Scoop''

13.

No verse can give pleasure for long, nor last, that is written by drinkers of water.

Horace

14.

The poetry from the eighteenth century was prose; the prose from the seventeenth century was poetry.

Hare, David

15.

Poetry is the achievement of the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits.

Sandburg, Carl

16.

Poetry is the journal of a sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the sky.

Sandburg, Carl

17.

Poetry, even when apparently most fantastic, is always a revolt against artifice, a revolt, in a sense, against actuality.

Joyce, James

18.

Poets and heroes are of the same race, the latter do what the former conceive.

Lamartine, Alphonse De

19.

If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.

Dickinson, Emily

20.

There is only beauty -- and it has only one perfect expression -- poetry. All the rest is a lie --except for those who live by the body, love, and, that love of the mind, friendship. For me, Poetry takes the place of love, because it is enamored of itself, and because its sensual delight falls back deliciously in my soul.

Mallarme, Stephane

21.

When power leads man towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.

Kennedy, John F.

22.

The courage of the poets is to keep ajar the door that leads into madness.

Morley, Christopher

23.

Poetry doesn't belong to those who write it, but to thosewho need it.

24.

Poetry is the key to the hieroglyphics of nature.

Hare, David

25.

The poet speaks to all men of that other life of theirs that they have smothered and forgotten.

Sitwell, Dame Edith

26.

Just as a new scientific discovery manifests something that was already latent in the order of nature, and at the same time is logically related to the total structure of the existing science, so the new poem manifests something that was already latent in the order of words.

Frye, Northrop

27.

Poetry must be as new as foam and as old as the rock.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

28.

Poetry is what Milton saw when he went blind.

Marquis, Don

29.

It seems just possible that a poem might happen to a very young man: but a poem is not poetry --That is a life.

Eliot, T. S.

30.

The writing of a poem is like a child throwing stones into a mineshaft. You compose first, then you listen for the reverberation.

Fenton, James

31.

Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words.

Engle, Paul

32.

The poets did well to conjoin music and medicine, because the office of medicine is but to tune the curious harp of man's body.

Bacon, Francis

33.

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

Chandler, Raymond

34.

Prose on certain occasions can bear a great deal of poetry; on the other hand, poetry sinks and swoons under a moderate weight of prose.

Landor, Walter Savage

35.

As a poet there is only one political duty, and that is to defend one's language against corruption. When it is corrupted, people lose faith in what they hear and this leads to violence.

Auden, W. H.

36.

You will not find poetry anywhere unless you bring some of it with you.

Joubert, Joseph

37.

Poets are born, not paid.

Mizner, Addison

38.

I would define the poetic effect as the capacity that a text displays for continuing to generate different readings, without ever being completely consumed.

Eco, Umberto

39.

I cannot accept the doctrine that in poetry there is a suspension of belief. A poet must never make a statement simply because it is sounds poetically exciting; he must also believe it to be true.

Auden, W. H.

40.

Teach you children poetry; it opens the mind, lends grace to wisdom and makes the heroic virtues hereditary.

Scott, Sir Walter

41.

Poetry is the utterance of deep and heart-felt truth -- the true poet is very near the oracle.

Chapin, Edwin Hubbel

42.

Poetry implies the whole truth, philosophy expresses only a particle of it.

Thoreau, Henry David

43.

It is as impossible to translate poetry as it is to translate music.

Voltaire

44.

Poetry is the impish attempt to paint the color of the wind.

Bodenheim, Maxwell

45.

We read poetry because the poets, like ourselves, have been haunted by the inescapable tyranny of time and death; have suffered the pain of loss, and the more wearing, continuous pain of frustration and failure; and have had moods of unlooked-for release and peace. They have known and watched in themselves and others.

Drew, Elizabeth

46.

I would as soon write free verse as play tennis with the net down.

Frost, Robert

47.

Written poetry is worth reading once, and then should be destroyed. Let the dead poets make way for others. Then we might even come to see that it is our veneration for what has already been created, however beautiful and valid it may be, that petrifies us.

Artaud, Antonin

48.

Any healthy man can go without food for two days -- but not without poetry.

Baudelaire, Charles

49.

The poet gives us his essence, but prose takes the mold of the body and mind.

Woolf, Virginia

50.

Of all great poems, love is the absolute and essential foundation.

Fitzhugh, C.