Poetry Quotes

Poetry is an art, and chief of the fine art; the easiest to dabble in, the hardest in which to reach true excellence.

I was one of those dark, quiet kids that wrote poetry.

Religious poetry, civic poetry, lyric or dramatic poetry are all categories of man's expression which are valid only if the endorsement of formal content is valid.

In my opinion, the most significant works of the twentieth century are those that rise beyond the conceptual tyranny of genre; they are, at the same time, poetry, criticism, narrative, drama, etc.

Poetry is fascinating. As soon as it begins the poetry has changed the thing into something extra, and somehow prose can go over into poetry.

And the second question, can poetry be taught? I didn't think so.

I was very interested in American poetry for many years. Much less now.

Women who are inclined to write poetry at all are inspired by being mad at something.

Gil Thorpe is a great diversion and is to book writing as poetry is to prose.

How does one happen to write a poem: where does it come from? That is the question asked by the psychologists or the geneticists of poetry.

I would say that American poetry has always been a poetry of personal testimony.

I believe that all poetry is formal in that it exists within limits, limits that are either inherited by tradition or limits that language itself imposes.

And my father was a comic. He could play any musical instrument. He loved to perform. He was a wonderfully comedic character. He had the ability to dance and sing and charm and analyze poetry.

Otherwise I don't read much adult poetry at all, because I'm not smart enough and mostly I don't get it.

Children seem naturally drawn to poetry - it's some combination of the rhyme, rhythm, and the words themselves.

Poetry is a natural energy resource of our country. It has no energy crisis, possessing a potential that will last as long as the country. Its power is equal to that of any country in the world.

While I've had a great distaste for what's usually called song in modern poetry or for what's usually called music, I really don't think of speech as so far from song.

I think there was a revolution in poetry, associated chiefly with Eliot and Pound; but maybe it is of the nature of revolutions or of the nature of history that their innovations should later come to look trivial or indistinguishable from technical tricks.

For me, poetry is a situation - a state of being, a way of facing life and facing history.

Poetry is a form of mathematics, a highly rigorous relationship with words.