POETRY QUOTES VI

quotations about poetry

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

Tags: Garrison Keillor


Poetry is prose in slow motion.

NICHOLSON BAKER

The Anthologist

Tags: Nicholson Baker


Poetry is the liquid voice that can wear through stone.

ADRIENNE RICH

attributed, Unlocking the Poem

Tags: Adrienne Rich


Poetry: three mismatched shoes at the entrance of a dark alley.

CHARLES SIMIC

Dime-Store Alchemy

Tags: Charles Simic


Poets suffer occasional delusions of angelhood and find themselves condemned to express it in the bric-a-brac tongues of the human world. Lots of them go mad.

GLEN DUNCAN

I, Lucifer

Tags: Glen Duncan


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

Tags: Chinua Achebe


The permanent passions of mankind--love, religion, patriotism, humanitarianism, hate, revenge, ambition; the conflict between free will and fate; the rise and fall of empires--these are all great themes, and, if greatly treated, and in accordance with the essentials applicable to all poetry, may produce poetry of the loftiest kind.

ALFRED AUSTIN

The Bridling of Pegasus

Tags: Alfred Austin


The poet's is the highest type of character: other men dwell in the conventional--he chiefly abides in the universal.

CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE

Intuitions and Summaries of Thought

Tags: Christian Nestell Bovee


There is no true poet in whom fancy is not close akin to faith.

JOHN C. BAILEY

The Claims of French Poetry

Tags: John C. Bailey


You will never be alone with a poet in your pocket.

JOHN ADAMS

letter to John Quincy Adams, May 14, 1781

Tags: John Adams


A true poet comes among us only once in a generation, sometimes not once in a century, and ... certain civilized nations never produce a great poet. We suffer from dearth of poets, not from lack of love for poetry.

AUSTIN O'MALLEY

Keystones of Thought

Tags: Austin O'Malley


O gracious God! how far have we
Profaned thy heavenly gift of poesy!

JOHN DRYDEN

To the Pious Memory of Mrs. Anne Killegrew

Tags: John Dryden


One of the current great problems in the world is fundamentalism of every kind -- political, spiritual -- and poetry is an antidote to fundamentalism. Poetry is about the clarities that you find when you don't simplify. Poetry is about complexity, nuance, subtlety. Poems also create larger fields of possibility. The imagination is limitless, so even when a person is confronted with an unchangeable outer circumstance, one thing poems give you is the sense that there's always, still, a changeability, a malleability, of inner circumstance. That's the beginning of freedom.

JANE HIRSHFIELD

"How can poems transform the world? A chat with poet Jane Hirshfield.", Washington Post, May 13, 2015


Poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.

MARY OLIVER

A Poetry Handbook

Tags: Mary Oliver


Poetry is either something that lives like fire inside you--like music to the musician or Marxism to the Communist--or else it is nothing, an empty formalized bore around which pedants can endlessly drone their notes and explanations.

F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

letter to "Scottie" Fitzgerald, August 3, 1940

Tags: F. Scott Fitzgerald


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

Tags: James Fenton


Written poetry is worth reading once, and then should be destroyed. Let the dead poets make way for others. Then we might even come to see that it is our veneration for what has already been created, however beautiful and valid it may be, that petrifies us.

ANTONIN ARTAUD

The Theater and Its Double

Tags: Antonin Artaud


A poem sings with a bad accent in any language not its own.

AUSTIN O'MALLEY

Keystones of Thought

Tags: Austin O'Malley


A poet can survive everything but a misprint.

OSCAR WILDE

"The Children of the Poets", Pall Mall Gazette, October 14, 1886

Tags: Oscar Wilde


A poet is a painter in his way, he draws to the life, but in another kind; we draw the nobler part, the soul and the mind; the pictures of the pen shall outlast those of the pencil, and even worlds themselves.

APHRA BEHN

Oroonoko

Tags: Aphra Behn