quotations about poetry
Poetry is God's work.
KATY LEDERER
"An Interview with Katy Lederer", Thermos Magazine, January 21, 2010
O gracious God! how far have we
Profaned thy heavenly gift of poesy!
JOHN DRYDEN
To the Pious Memory of Mrs. Anne Killegrew
Men of real talents in Arms have commonly approved themselves patrons of the liberal arts and friends to the poets, of their own as well as former times. In some instances by acting reciprocally, heroes have made poets, and poets heroes.
GEORGE WASHINGTON
letter to the Marquis de Lafayette, May 28, 1788
Poetry is never a sensible choice on financial grounds. Burglary beats poetry, when it comes to making money.
GARRISON KEILLOR
"Does love have to be a five-alarm fire?", Salon, July 15, 1998
I approach poetry and spirituality like literary nitroglycerin -- a little can do a lot and you better damn well be careful with it.
CRAIG JOHNSON
"A Conversation with Craig Johnson", The Cold Dish
Language, colour, form, and religious and civil habits of action, are all the instruments and materials of poetry; they may be called poetry by that figure of speech which considers the effect as a synonym of the cause. But poetry in a more restricted sense expresses those arrangements of language, and especially metrical language, which are created by that imperial faculty; whose throne is curtained within the invisible nature of man. And this springs from the nature itself of language, which is a more direct representation of the actions and passions of our internal being, and is susceptible of more various and delicate combinations, than colour, form, or motion, and is more plastic and obedient to the control of that faculty of which it is the creation. For language is arbitrarily produced by the imagination and has relation to thoughts alone; but all other materials, instruments and conditions of art, have relations among each other, which limit and interpose between conception and expression The former is as a mirror which reflects, the latter as a cloud which enfeebles, the light of which both are mediums of communication. Hence the fame of sculptors, painters, and musicians, although the intrinsic powers of the great masters of these arts may yield in no degree to that of those who have employed language as the hieroglyphic of their thoughts, has never equalled that of poets in the restricted sense of the term, as two performers of equal skill will produce unequal effects from a guitar and a harp. The fame of legislators and founders of religions, so long as their institutions last, alone seems to exceed that of poets in the restricted sense; but it can scarcely be a question, whether, if we deduct the celebrity which their flattery of the gross opinions of the vulgar usually conciliates, together with that which belonged to them in their higher character of poets, any excess will remain.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
A Defence of Poetry
From my earliest sense of self, I knew that I would be--should be--a poet. It was not as if I had a choice; more like the dying beauty all about breathed its last breath in me and commanded that I be doomed to play with words the rest of my days.
DAN SIMMONS
Hyperion
The emperor would prefer the poet to keep away from politics, the emperor's domain, so that he can manage things the way he likes.
CHINUA ACHEBE
Conjunctions, Fall 1991
I don't think good poetry can be produced in a kind of political attempt to overthrow some existing form. I think it just supersedes. People find a way in which they can say something. "I can't say it that way, what way can I find that will do?"
T. S. ELIOT
The Paris Review, spring-summer 1959
For verses and poems I can turn to true food.
ST. AUGUSTINE
Confessions
A true poet does not bother to be poetical. Nor does a nursery gardener scent his roses.
JEAN COCTEAU
"Le Secret Professionnel", A Call to Order
Poems allow us not only to bear the tally and toll of our transience, but to perceive, within their continually surprising abundance, a path through the grief of that insult into joy.
JANE HIRSHFIELD
Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World
I see poetry as a path toward new understanding and transformation.
JANE HIRSHFIELD
The Atlantic Online, September 18, 1997
The poem that says "I love you" is the little black cocktail dress, the classic thing that everyone would like to have written one of.
JAMES FENTON
BBC Radio, October 4, 1994
Only poetry can measure the distance between ourselves and the Other.
CHARLES SIMIC
The Unemployed Fortune-Teller
We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
"Anima Hominis", Per Amica Silentia Lunae
A poet can survive everything but a misprint.
OSCAR WILDE
"The Children of the Poets", Pall Mall Gazette, October 14, 1886
If you can't be a bad poet at seventeen, with your brother dying just down the corridor, what hope is there for poetry?
BERNARD BECKETT
Lullaby
A poet does not work by square or line.
WILLIAM COWPER
Conversation
Poetry might be defined as the clear expression of mixed feelings.
W. H. AUDEN
New Year Letter