A Quote by Denis Diderot

Poetry must have something in it that is barbaric, vast and wild.

Denis Diderot

Quote Topics

Poetry Barbaric Must Something Vast Wild

Quote Author

Denis Diderot
French - Editor
October 5, 1713 - July 31, 1784

We always imagine eternity as something beyond our conception, something vast, vast! But why must it be vast?

Fyodor Dostoevsky

You can't make poetry out of thought; poetry is passion. Linear thought must be seduced by wild mind, by the fires of ecstasy.

Jennifer Stone

Writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.

Theodor Adorno

It is barbaric to write poetry after Auschwitz.

Theodor Adorno

Hear and attend and listen; for this is what befell and be-happened and became and was, O my Best Beloved, when the Tame animals were wild. The dog was wild, and the Horse was wild, and the Cow was wild, and the Sheep was wild, and the Pig was wild -as wild as wild could be - and they walked in the Wet Wild Woods by their wild lones. But the wildest of all the wild animals was the Cat. He walked by himself and all places were alike to him

Rudyard Kipling

There's no difference between lyrics and poetry. Words are words. The only difference is the people who are in academic positions and call themselves poets and have an academic stance. They've got something to lose if they say it's all poetry; if there's not music to it, and you have to wear a certain kind of checkered shirt or something like that. It's all the same. Lyrics are lyrics, poetry is poetry, lyrics are poetry, and poetry is lyrics. They are interchangeable to me.

Van Morrison

Memoir is a unique opportunity to revisit yourself. I don't mean by memory. I mean in the revision process. You don't just write a chapter and that's it. You must constantly return to it. You must dote on it. And even if it's saying something ugly about who you are, you have to find the poetry in it. You have to find the poetry in yourself.

Joshua Mohr

The perils, rewards, punishments, and fulfillments of an adventure must be real, or the adventure is only a shifting and heartless nightmare. If I bet I must be made to pay, or there is no poetry in betting. If I challenge I must be made to fight, or there is no poetry in challenging. If I vow to be faithful I must be cursed when I am unfaithful, or there is no fun vowing.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

To know only one thing well is to have a barbaric mind: civilization implies the graceful relation of all varieties of experience to a central humane system of thought. The present age is peculiarly barbaric: introduce, say, a Hebrew scholar to an ichthyologist or an authority on Danish place names and the pair of them would have no single topic in common but the weather or the war (if there happened to be a war in progress, which is usual in this barbaric age).

Robert Graves

From what the moderns want, we must learn what poetry should become; from what the ancients did, what poetry must be.

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Something told the wild geese It was time to go. Though the fields lay golden Something whispered, "snow." Leaves were green and stirring, Berries, luster-glossed, But beneath warm feathers Something cautioned, "frost." All the sagging orchards Steamed with amber spice But each wild breast stiffened At remembered ice. Something told the wild geese It was time to fly- Summer sun was on their wings, Winter in their cry.

Rachel Field

I think there are different kinds of poetry for different stages of life and there's the wild, exuberance of youth, there's the painful agony of midlife experience, there's the late poetry in the presence of death.

Edward Hirsch

Alchemy is the art of far and near, and I think poetry is alchemy in that way. It's delightful to distort size, to see something that's tiny as though it were vast.

Robert Morgan

Being wild can be wearing a silly hat. Being wild can be dancing weird. Being wild can be shooting people. What do I think being wild is? Nothing. Actually, the whole world is wild. Everything is wild.

Juliette Lewis

Poetry was syllable and rhythm. Poetry was the measurement of breath. Poetry was time make audible. Poetry evoked the present moment; poetry was the antidote to history. Poetry was language free from habit.