850 private quotes tagged poetry

“I have always made my own rules, in poetry as in life - though I have tried of late to cooperate more with my family. I do, however, believe that without order or pattern poetry is useless.” — Anne Stevenson

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“There is no gilding of setting sun or glamor of poetry to light up the ferocious and endless toil of the farmers' wives.” — Hamlin Garland

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“I was excited by what my painter friends were doing, and they seemed to be interested in our poetry too, and that was a wonderful little, fizzy sort of world.” — Kenneth Koch

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“I am grateful for - though I can't keep up with - the flood of articles, theses, and textbooks that mean to share insight concerning the nature of poetry.” — A. R. Ammons

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“We simply have not kept in touch with poetry.” — Paul Muldoon

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“If we ask a vague question, such as, 'What is poetry?' we expect a vague answer, such as, 'Poetry is the music of words,' or 'Poetry is the linguistic correction of disorder.'” — A. R. Ammons

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“Journalism wishes to tell what it is that has happened everywhere as though the same things had happened for every man. Poetry wishes to say what it is like for any man to be himself in the presence of a particular occurrence as though only he were alone there.” — Archibald MacLeish

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“The poet exposes himself to the risk. All that has been said about poetry, all that he has learned about poetry, is only a partial assurance.” — A. R. Ammons

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“Poetry leads us to the unstructured sources of our beings, to the unknown, and returns us to our rational, structured selves refreshed.” — A. R. Ammons

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“Probably all the attention to poetry results in some value, though the attention is more often directed to lesser than to greater values.” — A. R. Ammons

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“Now I think poetry will save nothing from oblivion, but I keep writing about the ordinary because for me it's the home of the extraordinary, the only home.” — Philip Levine

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“The whole thing about making films in an organic film on location is that it's not all about characters, relationships and themes, it's also about place and the poetry of place. It's about the spirit of what you find, the accidents of what you stumble across.” — Mike Leigh

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“Poetry is at least an elegance and at most a revelation.” — Robert Fitzgerald

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“For whatever reason, people, including very well-educated people or people otherwise interested in reading, do not read poetry.” — Paul Muldoon

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“Meet some people who care about poetry the way you do. You'll have that readership. Keep going until you know you're doing work that's worthy. And then see what happens. That's my advice.” — Philip Levine

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“I thought we were gonna open up the world of poetry and music to all kinds of things, and yet, I can't really think of anyone who's done anything like it since.” — Ray Manzarek

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“There is the view that poetry should improve your life. I think people confuse it with the Salvation Army.” — John Ashbery

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“I have been enlightened. I have fallen into poetry and it has swallowed me up.” — Keith Haring

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“I was always interested in French poetry sort of as a sideline to my own work, I was translating contemporary French poets. That kind of spilled out into translation as a way to earn money, pay for food and put bread on the table.” — Paul Auster

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“Music is my thing. It's my thing it's what I love. It's what I do. It's football to me it's Christmas to me religion to me poetry to me.” — Ryan Adams

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“That's a wonderful change that's taken place, and so most poetry today is published, if not directly by the person, certainly by the enterprise of the poet himself, working with his friends.” — A. R. Ammons

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“The irony is, going to work every day became the subject of probably my best poetry.” — Philip Levine

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“My father had wanted to name me for Dylan Thomas. He had seen him speak on one of those drunken poetry tours he did.” — Dylan Walsh

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“Besides the actual reading in class of many poems, I would suggest you do two things: first, while teaching everything you can and keeping free of it, teach that poetry is a mode of discourse that differs from logical exposition.” — A. R. Ammons

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“My mother carried on and supported us her ambition had been to write poetry and songs.” — Philip Levine

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