Poetry Quotes - Page 2

There is not a particle of life which does not bear poetry within it

One of the ridiculous aspects of being a poet is the huge gulf between how seriously we take ourselves and how generally we are ignored by everybody else.

In this poor body, composed of one hundred bones and nine openings, is something called spirit, a flimsy curtain swept this way and that by the slightest breeze. It is spirit, such as it is, which led me to poetry, at first little more than a pastime, then the full business of my life. There have been times when my spirit, so dejected, almost gave up the quest, other times when it was proud, triumphant. So it has been from the very start, never finding peace with itself, always doubting the worth of what it makes.

Whatever is not stone is light

When the tea is brought at five o'clock And all the neat curtains are drawn with care, The little black cat with bright green eyes Is suddenly purring there.

Silence is a sounding thing, To one who listens hungrily

Poetry is a packsack of invisible keepsakes.

I think of my peace paintings as one long poem, with each painting being a single stanza.

One will never again look at a birch tree, after the Robert Frost poem, in exactly the same way.

He who has rejected his demons badgers us to death with his angels

Poetry is subconscious conversation, it is as much the work of those who understand it and those who make it.

United States: the country where liberty is a statue.

They swayed about upon a rocking horse, And thought it Pegasus.

The best craftsmanship always leaves holes and gaps... so that something that is not in the poem can creep, crawl, flash or thunder in.

I was a late bloomer. But anyone who blooms at all, ever, is very lucky.

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.

Let no-one say the past is dead, the past is all about us and within.

I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now Is hung with bloom along the bough.

Forests may be gorgeous but there is nothing more alive than a tree that learns how to grow in a cemetery.

To read a poem is to hear it with our eyes; to hear it is to see it with our ears.

For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.

Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason.

The author of haiku should be absent, and only the haiku present.

Writing was a political act and poetry was a cultural weapon.