Quotes on poetry
The poem is the point at which our strength gave out.
Rosen, Richard
Poets are like magicians, searching for magical phrases to pull rabbits out of people's souls.
Addams, Glade Byron
I don't create poetry, I create myself, for me my poems are a way to me.
Södergran, Edith
Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.
Chesterton, Gilbert Keith
Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows.
Burke, Edmund
The poet is in the end probably more afraid of the dogmatist who wants to extract the message from the poem and throw the poem away than he is of the sentimentalist who says, "Oh, just let me enjoy the poem."
Warren, Robert Penn
He who draws noble delights from sentiments of poetry is a true poet, though he has never written a line in all his life.
Sand, George
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.
White, E. B.
Be obscure clearly.
White, E. B.
A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.
Frost, Robert
Your prayer can be poetry, and poetry can be your prayer.
Day, Noelani
A sold poem loses half its meaning.
Addams, Glade Byron
Everything in creation has its appointed painter or poet and remains in bondage like the princess in the fairy tale 'til its appropriate liberator comes to set it free.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
I've written some poetry I don't understand myself.
Sandburg, Carl
Poetry is the journal of the sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air. Poetry is a search for syllables to shoot at the barriers of the unknown and the unknowable. Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away.
Sandburg, Carl
Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.
Sandburg, Carl
It is the job of poetry to clean up our word-clogged reality by creating silences around things.
Mallarme, Stephen
Poets are mysterious, but a poet when all is said is not much more mysterious than a banker.
Tate, Allen
There's no money in poetry, but then there's no poetry in money, either.
Graves, Robert
The distinction between historian and poet is not in the one writing prose and the other verse... the one describes the thing that has been, and the other a kind of thing that might be. Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are of the nature rather of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.
Aristotle
Poetry is ordinary language raised to the nth power. Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words.
Engle, Paul
Poetry should... should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.
Keats, John
Happiness is sharing a bowl of cherries and a book of poetry with a shade tree. He doesn't eat much and doesn't read much, but listens well and is a most gracious host.
Alauda, Astrid
Each man carries within him the soul of a poet who died young.
Sainte-Beuve
Poetry is all that is worth remembering in life.
Hazlitt, William
Poetry is a packsack of invisible keepsakes.
Sandburg, Carl
A poet looks at the world the way a man looks at a woman.
Stevens, Wallace
A poet can survive everything but a misprint.
Wilde, Oscar