Top 1200 Good Poetry Quotes & Sayings - Page 4

There is such a thing as the poetry of a mistake, and when you say, "Mistakes were made," you deprive an action of its poetry, and you sound like a weasel.

Theater is far superior to film in poetry, in abstract poetry.

Poetry is the most mistaught subject in any school because we teach poetry by form and not by content.

I'm an actress, primarily. I love to write poetry. I've been writing poetry since I was 12 years old.

Why speak of the use of poetry? Poetry is what uses us.

I have been writing poetry since 1975. My first poetry book was published in 1986.

I'm very attracted to poetry for all the reasons someone likes poetry. The notion of compression seems to fit my personality.

Poetry, from describing external events objectively, is becoming subjectified into a poetry of personal conscious expression.

My idea of good poetry is any dog doing anything.

one can never be sure whether it's good poetry or bad acid

I began to write poetry when I was about four years old. In other words, I've always been writing poetry.

I hardly remember how I started to write poetry. It's hard to imagine what I thought poetry could do.

The trouble with poetry is that it encourages the writing of more poetry.

I would not recommend poetry as a career. In the first place, it's impossible in this time and place - in this culture - to make poetry a career. The writing of poetry is one thing. It's an obsession, the scratching of a divine itch, and has nothing to do with money. You can, however, make a career out of being a poet by teaching, traveling around, and giving lectures. It's a thin living at best.

There is a kind of poetry, bad and good, in evrything, everywhere we look.

I do not go in search of poetry. I wait for poetry to visit me.

My verses are my diary. My poetry is a poetry of proper names.

I think of poetry as something out there in the world and within each of us. I don't mean that everyone can write poetry - it's an art, a craft, it requires enormous commitment like any art. But there's a core of desire in each of us and poetry goes to and comes from that core. It's the social, economic, institutional gap that makes it difficult.

[The story of Adam and Eve] it's poetry. One must interpret it as poetry. The first 11 chapters of Genesis [the Primeval History] are absolutely remarkable.

Poetry, in a general sense, may be defined to be 'the expression of the imagination': and poetry is connate with the origin of man.

To me, photography is not just a visual art, but something closer to poetry - or at least to some poetry, such as the haiku.

I've done a number of readings at poetry lounges in Vancouver and Los Angeles. I've compiled a book of poetry that's completed, and two others I'm working on.

In my life, I've seen enormous increase in the consumption of poetry. When I was young, there were virtually no poetry readings.

Real poetry, is to lead a beautiful life. To live poetry is better than to write it.

If you like the precision and concision of poetry, a page of prose is unsatisfying in a certain way. And poetry is so direct.

I definitely wish to distinguish American poetry from British or other English language poetry.

Because so many poets have chosen a political idiom right now in the US and so many poets have assigned value and inherent knowledge to their racial identity and used that as a form of argumentation, I'm thinking now's a good time to buy low for my own poems and write poems that are deeply in the interior and the psyche. There are plenty of people out there working on subjects of political poetry, partisan poetry, all the way through to crossing the threshold of propaganda. I start thinking now's a good time for me to start writing about the myths of my own psyche.

My life's purpose is to write poetry - but behind the poetry must be the vision of a fresh revelation for men.

Poetry's unnat'ral; no man ever talked poetry 'cept a beadle on boxin' day.

I did not have a very literary background. I came to poetry from the sciences and mathematics, and also through an interest in Japanese and Chinese poetry in translation.

Proper names are poetry in the raw. Like all poetry they are untranslatable.

The Divine Comedy is a political poem and when you say poetry is not about - he's always quoted out of context, that "poetry makes nothing happen," that doesn't mean you shrug your shoulders and don't try to make anything happen. And Dante felt that poetry was engaged, there was a point of view; it's not my point of view, it's orthodox medieval Christianity, and I have my troubles with that. He didn't feel that you could just rule out so important a section of life - we care about these things, and it's out of caring about them that we write poetry.

I don't believe in tame poetry. . . . Poetry busts guts.

I don't think it's always good to read lots of poetry.

To be honest, I wasn't crazy about the kind of poetry I found in high school English books. I didn't get really excited about poetry until I discovered Lorca in college. If it wasn't for surrealism, I'm not sure I'd have become so involved in poetry. I was attracted by the extravagant imagery and elements of fantasy. This was in the '70s and it seemed to fit the psychedelic mood of the times. I found it liberating.

I've had the good fortune to read a lot of great American writers in translation, and my absolute beloved, for me one of the greatest writers ever, is Mark Twain. Yes, yes, yes. And Whitman, from whom the whole of 20th-century poetry sprung up. Whitman was the origin of things, someone with a completely different outlook. But I think that he's the father of the new wave in the world's poetry which to this very day is hitting the shore.

Any reflection about poetry should begin, or end, with this question: who and how many read poetry books?

People who publish poetry today do it from a sense that poetry needs to be published, not because they think they are going to make money.

Poetry can be dangerous, especially beautiful poetry, because it gives the illusion of having had the experience without actually going through it.

The experience of poetry could bring my mother back to me. Poetry offers a different kind of solace - here on earth.

A lot of people think they can write poetry, and many do, because they can figure out how to line up the words or make certain sounds rhyme or just imitate the other poets they've read. But this boy, he's the real poet, because when he tries to put on paper what he's seen with his heart, he will believe deep down that there are no good words for it, no words can do it, and at that moment he will have begun to write poetry.

The true poetry of life: the poetry of the commonplace, of the ordinary man, of the plain, toil-worn woman, with their loves and their joys, their sorrows and their griefs.

The future of poetry is immense, because in poetry, where it is worthy of its high destinies, our race, as time goes on, will find an ever surer and surer stay ... More and more mankind will discover that we have to turn to poetry to interpret life for us, to console us, to sustain us.

First of all I think that poetry is very noble and I always have with me the sense of the nobility of poetry.

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

I have piles of poetry books in the bathroom, on the stairs, everywhere. The only way to write poetry is to read it.

I don't think poetry is something that can be taught. We can encourage young writers, but what you can't teach them is the very essence of poetry.

When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.

The rules or 'laws' of poetry are only tentative devices, an approximate scheme. There is no Sinaitic recipe for poetry, for the individual poem is the norm.

I think the culture can absorb so many people writing poetry and trying to earn their living in poetry.

I came into music because I thought the presentation of poetry wasn't vibrant enough. So I merged improvised poetry with basic rock chords.

Music has a poetry of its own, and that poetry is called melody.

Don't you think that as a people, Americans have less poetry, real poetry, in their souls than any other nations?

I don't think it's always good to read lots of poetry

Poets are political, they have to be reflections of their times [because] they're living in their times... Poetry is political in that it's standing in opposition to fascism. Good poetry asks a bunch of questions and asks the audience to interact with themselves or see themselves in it; maybe you like it or you don't like it. But the fascist sort of stuff plays on your fears and tells you to jump on the party line and gives some simple excuses - blame this person.

I never think of poetry or the poetry scene, only separate poems written by individuals.

I feel in poetry there aren't that many rules that you need to absolutely live by depending on your style of poetry.

I'm a poetry-skipper myself. I don't like to boast, but I have probably skipped more poetry than any other person of my age and weight in this country - make it any other two persons. This doesn't mean that I hate poetry. I don't feel that strongly about it. It only means that those who wish to communicate with me by means of the written word must do so in prose.

Eloquence is heard; poetry is overheard ... All poetry is of the nature of the soliloquy.

Poetry is not an issue of form and enjambments. Poetry, as the word is classically used, has to do with sound and sense. It can be rhyme. It can be rhythm, pace, breath.