Best 8159 quotes in «poetry quotes» category

A mighty good sausage stuffer was spoiled when the man became a poet.

And the night shall be filled with music, And the cares, that infest the day, Shall fold their tents like the Arabs, and silently steal away.

And we were Banksy on an overpass in New Orleans spray-painting porch lights on the hurricane. We were welcome mats for the un-forgiven. We never sold our windpipes to make a living. We were the letters sent to the wrong address, but opened anyway. We opened anyway.

And with tears of blood he cleansed the hand, The hand that held the steel: For only blood can wipe out blood, And only tears can heal

And of poetry, the success is not attained when it lulls and satisfies, but when it astonishes and fires us with new endeavours after the unattainable.

A poem needs understanding through the senses. The point of diving in a lake is not immediately to swim to the shore; it’s to be in the lake, to luxuriate in the sensation of water. You do not work the lake out. It is an experience beyond thought. Poetry soothes and emboldens the soul to accept mystery.

And truly Philosophy is but sophisticated poetry. Whence do those ancient writers derive all their authority but from the poets?

A poem begins with a lump in the throat

A poem is like a radio that can broadcast continuously for thousands of years.

A poet, as he is the author to others of the highest wisdom, pleasure, virtue, and glory, so he ought personally to be the happiest, the best, the wisest, and the most illustrious of men.

A poet is a combination of an instrument and a human being in one person, with the former gradually taking over the latter. The sensation of this takeover is responsible for timbre; the realization of it, for destiny.

A poet's work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep.

Art as a whole is a riddle. Another way of putting this is to say that art expresses something while at the same time hiding it.

A poem is a naked person... Some people say that I am a poet.

A poet is someone who stands outside in the rain hoping to be struck by lightning.

A poet is wounded into speech, and he examines these wounds, meticulously, to discover how to heal them. The bad poet harangues at the pain and yowls at the weapons that lacerate him; the great poet explores the inflamed lips of ruined flesh with ice-caked fingers, glittering and precise; but ultimately his poem is the echoing, dual voice reporting the damages.

Art's effect is due to the tension resulting from the clash of the collocation of elements of two (or more) systems of interpretation. This conflict has the function of breaking down automatism of perception and occurs simultaneously on the many levels of a work of art ... All levels may carry meaning.

As long as there is satire, the poet is, as it were, particeps criminis.

A statue of Apollo in a museum does not seem naked, but attach a tie to its neck and it will strike us as indecent ... The text is one of the components of an artistic work, albeit an extremely important component ... But the artistic effect as a whole arises from comparisons of the text with a complex set of ontological and ideological esthetic ideas.

Any great warrior is also a scholar, and a poet, and an artist.

Artistic simplicity is more complex than artistic complexity for it arises via the simplification of the latter and against its backdrop or system.

As a direct line to human feeling, empathic experience, genuine language and detail, poetry is everything that headline news is not. It takes us inside situations, helps us imagine life from more than one perspective, honors imagery and metaphor - those great tools of thought - and deepens our confidence in a meaningful world.

As for the usefulness of poetry, its uses are many. It is the deification of reality.

A speech is poetry: cadence, rhythm, imagery, sweep! A speech reminds us that words, like children, have the power to make dance the dullest beanbag of a heart.

A story of particular facts is a mirror which obscures and distorts that which should be beautiful; poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which it distorts.

At certain times, men regard poetry merely as a bright flame, but to women it was, and always will be, a warm fire.

A vein of poetry exists in the hearts of all men.

At the outset, it is only liking, not understanding, that matters. Gaps in understanding ... are not only important, they are perhaps even welcome, like clearings in the woods, the better to allow the heart's rays to stream out without obstacle. The unlit shadows should remain obscure, which is the very condition of enchantment.

A wise man can and should stand above his times, not so the poet, but he should be their apex.

A true poem is distinguished not so much by a felicitous expression, or any thought it suggests, as by the atmosphere which surrounds it. Most have beauty of outline merely, and are striking as the form and bearing of a stranger; but true verses come toward us indistinctly, as the very breath of all friendliness, and envelop us in their spirit and fragrance.

Babies are not brought by storks and poets are not produced by workshops.

Before now poetry has taken notice Of wars, and what are wars but politics Transformed from chronic to acute and bloody?

Baudelaire's L'Héautontimorouménos was long seen to be a sexual sadomasochistic poem, it is now generally accepted that the poem is about writing poetry.

Bats have no bankers and they do not drink and cannot be arrested and pay no tax and, in general, bats have it made.

But poetry is not to be lived, except for the few to whom it is more important than self-preservation.

Black Poets should live--not leap From steel bridges, like the white boys do.

Can you remember? when we thought the poets taught how to live?

But all art is sensual and poetry particularly so. It is directly, that is, of the senses, and since the senses do not exist without an object for their employment all art is necessarily objective. It doesn't declaim or explain, it presents.

Certain supplementary restrictions imposed on the text compel us to perceive it as poetry. As soon as one assigns a given text to the category of poetry, the number of meaningful elements in it acquires the capacity to grow and the system of their combinations also becomes more complex.

Chestnut brown canary, ruby throated sparrow, sing a song, don't be long, thrill me to the marrow.

Charles Dickens was an avid seeker of names - he read directories and looked for odd names on gravestones.

Creatures crawl in search of blood to terrorize your neighborhood. And whosoever shall be found without the soul for getting down, must stand and face the hounds of hell, and rot inside a corpse's shell.

clarity need not be equivalent to / readability. How readable is the world?

Each memorable verse of a true poet has two or three times the written content.

Deprivation is for me what daffodils were for Wordsworth.

Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin Dance me through the panic 'til I'm gathered safely in Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove Dance me to the end of love

Every authentic poem contributes to the labour of poetry... to bring together what life has separated or violence has torn apart.

Eloquence is heard; poetry is overheard ... All poetry is of the nature of the soliloquy.

Every genuine poet is necessarily a Columbus. America existed for centuries before Columbus but it was only Columbus who was able to track it down.

Each word bears its weight, so you have to read my poems quite slowly.