Poetry Quotes - Page 23

This poem will never reach its destination. On Rousseau's Ode To Posterity

For true poetry, complete poetry, consists in the harmony of contraries. Hence, it is time to say aloud--and it is here above allthat exceptions prove the rule--that everything that exists in nature exists in art.

There is no heroic poem in the world but is at bottom a biography, the life of a man.

It is a test (a positive test, I do not assert that it is always valid negatively), that genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.

The bad poet is usually unconscious where he ought to be conscious, and conscious where he ought to be unconscious.

A poem is good if it contains a new analogy and startles the reader out of the habit of treating words as counters.

When the rhythm and night ride, no heart can hide.

I believe that poetry is a primal impulse within us all.

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.

It is the role of the artistic coder to question the coding languages, both through self-reflection and by using them for unintended purposes. These coders introduce multiplicity where none existed and challenge definitions of intent for the entire environment of programming language, machine and system.

Poetry today is easier to write but harder to remember.

Poetry is a big space and I love it.

All I do and say and think 'as a poet' is much truer and more intimate than anything I say face to face.

Poetry is language in orbit.

The fact that there are so many weak, poor and boring stories and novels written and published in America has been ascribed by our rebels to the horrible squareness of our institutions, the idiocy of power, the debasement of sexual instincts, and the failure of writers to be alienated enough. The poems and novels of these same rebellious spirits, and their theoretical statements, are grimy and gritty and very boring too, besides being nonsensical, and it is evident by now that polymorphous sexuality and vehement declarations of alienation are not going to produce great works of art either.

These days, if you happen to be a poet you have to sing your words to get your ideas out.

Iambics march from short to long;-- With a leap and a bound the swift Anapaests throng

Poetry is not the proper antithesis to prose, but to science. Poetry is opposed to science, and prose to meter. The proper and immediate object of science is the acquirement, or communication of truth; the proper and immediate object of poetry is the communication of immediate pleasure.

I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry; that is, prose = words in their best order; - poetry = the best words in the best order.

Milton, Madam, was a genius that could cut a Colossus from a rock; but could not carve heads upon cherry-stones.

The meaning of poetry has no sureness of direction; is like the sling, it is not under control.

Poetry is not a waiting room where one stays overnight...every word is war.

For a poet, making poems is a way of viewing the world, being in the world, breathing.

Our earliest poets were shamans. Today, as in the earliest times, true shamans are poets of consciousness who know the power of song and story to teach and to heal.

If a poem is not memorable, there's probably something wrong. One of the problems of free verse is that much of the free verse poetry is not memorable.