Poetry Quotes - Page 7

Poetry is a language in which man explores his own amazement.

Verses which do not teach men new and moving truths do not deserve to be read.

The progress of any writer is marked by those moments when he manages to outwit his own inner police system.

When oxygen and sulphur dioxide are mixed in the presence of a filiament of platinum, they form sulphurous acid. This combination takes place only if the platinum is present; nevertheless the newly formed acid contains no trace of platinum, and the platinum itself is apparently unaffected: has remained inert, neutral, and unchanged. The mind of the poet is the shred of platinum.

The poet's mind is in fact a receptacle for seizing and storing up numberless feelings, phrases, images, which remain there until all the particles which can unite to form a new compound are present together.

Poetry is not a civilizer, rather the reverse, for great poetry appeals to the most primitive instincts.

A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.

Poetry is an act of peace.

Only in Russia poetry is respected - it gets people killed.

Cold hearts don't bleed. Still they pray for eternity, never seeing tomorrow.

Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words.

If a poet knows more about a horse than he does about heaven, he might better stick to the horse, and some day the horse may carry him into heaven.

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 poet's autobiography is his poetry. Anything else can only be a footnote.

Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.

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.

It is never what a poem says that matters, but what it is.

Poetry is an orphan of silence. The words never quite equal the experience behind them.

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion.

Poets are masters of us ordinary men, in knowledge of the mind, because they drink at streams which we have not yet made accessible to science.

They (the poets) are to us in a manner the fathers and authors of the wisdom.

A poem is really a kind of machine for producing the poetic state by means of words.

Poetry is the tunnel at the end of the light.

What shall I say about poetry? What shall I say about those clouds, or about the sky? Look; look at them; look at it! And nothing more. Don't you understand anything about poetry? Leave that to the critics and the professors. For neither you, nor I, nor any poet knows what poetry is.

Poetry is the utterance of deep and heart-felt truth - the true poet is very near the oracle.