Poetry Quotes - Page 37

He who, in an enlightened and literary society, aspires to be a great poet, must first become a little child. He must take to pieces the whole web of his mind. He must unlearn much of that knowledge which has perhaps constituted hitherto his chief title to superiority. His very talents will be a hindrance to him.

As civilization advances, poetry almost necessarily declines.

He who, in an enlightened and literary society, aspires to be a great poet, must first become a little child.

The merit of poetry, in its wildest forms, still consists in its truth-truth conveyed to the understanding, not directly by the words, but circuitously by means of imaginative associations, which serve as its conductors.

My old teacher's definition of poetry is an attempt to understand.

You must believe: a poem is a holy thing - a good poem, that is. The poem, even a short time after being written, seems no miracle; unwritten, it seems something beyond the capacity of the gods.

I'm working on a poetry collection for Papaveria Press . It fills me with trepidation - poetry is something I'm much more self-conscious about than prose.

Poetry is a mug's game.

Till Human voices wake us, and we drown.

when a poem says something that could not have been said in any other way, in music, prose, sculpture, movement or paint, then it is poetry.

Coleridge received the Person from Porlock And ever after called him a curse, Then why did he hurry to let him in? He could have hid in the house.

Memory exercised in a particular way is a natural gift of poetic genius. The poet above all else, is a person who never forgets certain sense impressions which he has experienced and which he can relive again as though with all their original freshness.

In pursuing certain virtues - colorful local effects, personae and personality, juxtaposition, close calls with nonsense, uncertainty, critiques of ordinary language - the current crop of American poets necessarily give up on others.

To do a poem justice, explain what makes it unique; to get a poem noticed, explain what makes it typical.

Only poetry can address grief.

True poets, like great artists, have scarcely any childhood, and no old age.

Poetry, like dreams, will eventually break through every person's consciousness, even the tightest iconoclast's.

If not then you must be trying to hear us and in such cases we cannot be heard. We remain in the darkness, unseen. In the center of unpeeled bananas, we exist. Uncolored by perception. Clothed to the naked eye. Five senses cannot sense the fact of our existence. And that's the only fact. In fact, there are no facts.

Each man has his own batch of poems.

The spirit of poetry, like all other living powers, must of necessity circumscribe itself by rules, were it only to unite power with beauty.

Sir, I admit your general rule, That every poet is a fool, But you yourself may serve to show it, That every fool is not a poet.

Poetry, even that of the loftiest, and seemingly, that of the wildest odes, [has] a logic of its own as severe as that of science; and more difficult, because more subtle, more complex, and dependent on more and more fugitive causes. In the truly great poets... there is a reason assignable, not only for every word, but for the position of every word.

An undevout poet is an impossibility.

Rural poetry is the pleasure ground of those who live in cities.

The end of writing is to instruct; the end of poetry is to instruct by pleasing.