Poetry Quotes

And there are a lot more people reading poetry, but there are not so many people reading an individual poet.

Poetry is a sort of homecoming.

If you cannot be a poet, be the poem.

I have to admit that I had a lot of problems with poetry.

And, I mean, I think poetry does need to be met to some extent, especially, I guess, 19th century poetry, and for me, it's just been so worth the effort. It's like I'm planting a garden in my head.

I have nothing to say, I am saying it, and that is poetry.

There is poetry as soon as we realize that we possess nothing.

Poetry is man's rebellion against being what he is.

Always be a poet, even in prose.

Sometimes poetry is inspired by the conversation entered into by reading other poems.

If poetry alters the way in which the reader views the world, then it has had its desired effect.

An experienced reader uses the poem as an agent of inquiry. This makes poetry very exciting, unstable, and interactive.

No poem is easily grasped; so why should any reader expect fast results?

Anticipating that most poetry will be worse than carrying heavy luggage through O'Hare Airport, the public, to its loss, reads very little of it.

I gave up on new poetry myself 30 years ago when most of it began to read like coded messages passing between lonely aliens in a hostile world.

The poet exposes himself to the risk. All that has been said about poetry, all that he has learned about poetry, is only a partial assurance.

Probably all the attention to poetry results in some value, though the attention is more often directed to lesser than to greater values.

Poetry leads us to the unstructured sources of our beings, to the unknown, and returns us to our rational, structured selves refreshed.

Once every five hundred years or so, a summary statement about poetry comes along that we can't imagine ourselves living without.

Besides the actual reading in class of many poems, I would suggest you do two things: first, while teaching everything you can and keeping free of it, teach that poetry is a mode of discourse that differs from logical exposition.

Poetry is a succession of questions which the poet constantly poses.

Well I guess the plan was to write poetry and publish books and make a living from writing poetry. That was a pretty ambitious plan I guess.

Well - I started writing - probably in the early 60s and by say '65-'66 I had read most of the poetry that had been published - certainly in the 20 years prior to that.

If you read quickly to get through a poem to what it means, you have missed the body of the poem.

Traditional matter must be glorified, since it would be easier to listen to the re-creation of familiar stories than to quite new and unexpected things; the listeners, we must remember, needed poetry chiefly as the re-creation of tired hours.

That is to say, epic poetry has been invented many times and independently; but, as the needs which prompted the invention have been broadly similar, so the invention itself has been.

If epic poetry is a definite species, the sagas do not fall within it.