A Quote by W. H. Auden

Adjectives are the potbelly of poetry.

W. H. Auden

Quote Topics

Adjectives Poetry

Quote Author

W. H. Auden
English - Poet
February 21, 1907 - September 29, 1973

But the adjectives change,” said Jimmy. “Nothing’s worse than last year’s adjectives.

Margaret Atwood

I have felt great advances in my poetry, the main one being a growing victory over word nuances and a superfluity of adjectives.

Sylvia Plath

People have only two or three adjectives to describe people in the public eye. And that's okay. As long as those adjectives aren't train wreck, mess, terrible.

Taylor Swift

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.

Damon Galgut

Virtually every beginning poet hurts himself by an addiction to adjectives. Verbs are by far the most important things for poems-especially wonderful tough monosyllables like "gasp" and "cry." Nouns are the next most important. Adjectives tend to be useless.

Donald Hall

Like Pinter and Orton, the writer, Clive Exton, catches the poetry of modern everyday speech, which, whether we like it or not, includes four-letter words used as verbs, nouns, adverbs and adjectives. But, God, is it difficult to learn.

Sheila Hancock

I used to have a potbelly pig named Terrance. He died of obesity.

Christian McCaffrey

My first stand-up experience was in Tallahassee at a club called Potbelly's.

Bert Kreischer

You never see a man walking down the street with a woman who has a little potbelly and a bald spot.

Elayne Boosler

I hate pretty-looking boys. I'd rather have a guy with a potbelly than one who's in the gym all the time and watches what he eats.

Ali Larter

Poetry is the most informative of all of the arts because everything comes down to poetry. No matter what it is we are describing, ultimately we use either a metaphor; or we say "that's poetry in motion." You drink a glass of wine and say, "that's poetry in a bottle." Everything is poetry, so I think we come down to emotional information. And that's what poetry conveys.

Nikki Giovanni

I myself have never called what I write anti-poetry. I also think that my poetry should not be only known as the poetry of Ernesto Cardenal but rather as Nicaraguan poetry.

Ernesto Cardenal

What is an adjective? Nouns name the world. Verbs activate the names. Adjectives come from somewhere else. The word adjective (epitheton in Greek) is itself an adjective meaning 'placed on top', 'added', 'appended', 'foreign'. Adjectives seem fairly innocent additions, but look again. These small imported mechanisms are in charge of attaching everything in the world to its place in particularity. They are the latches of being.

Anne Carson

I read a lot of poetry. All types of poetry, but mostly Catalan poetry, because I believe poetry is the essence of language. Reading the classics, be they medieval or contemporary, gives me a stylistic energy that I'm very interested in.