850 private quotes tagged poetry

“Nobody, I think, ought to read poetry, or look at pictures or statues, who cannot find a great deal more in them than the poet or artist has actually expressed. Their highest merit is suggestiveness.” — Nathaniel Hawthorne

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“There is little premium in poetry in a world that thinks of Pound and Whitman as a weight and a sampler, not an Ezra, a Walt, a thing of beauty, a joy forever.” — Anna Quindlen

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“Poetry is ordinary language raised to the Nth power. Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words.” — Paul Engle

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“Each memorable verse of a true poet has two or three times the written content.” — Alfred de Musset

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“The moment of change is the only poem.” — Adrienne Rich

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“A poet's autobiography is his poetry. Anything else is just a footnote.” — Yevgeny Yevtushenko

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“You don't have to suffer to be a poet; adolescence is enough suffering for anyone.” — John Ciardi

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“I sometimes talk about the making of a poem within the poem.” — Howard Nemerov

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“If you cannot be a poet, be the poem.” — David Carradine

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“If you read quickly to get through a poem to what it means, you have missed the body of the poem.” — M. H. Abrams

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“The poem is a little myth of man's capacity of making life meaningful. And in the end, the poem is not a thing we see-it is, rather, a light by which we may see-and what we see is life.” — Robert Penn Warren

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“The poet may be used as a barometer, but let us not forget that he is also part of the weather.” — Lionel Trilling

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“Poetry is the art of creating imaginary gardens with real toads.” — Marianne Moore

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“The novel is born of disillusionment the poem, of despair.” — Jose Bergamin

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“Everyone thinks they're going to write one book of poems or one novel.” — Marilyn Hacker

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“Sometimes poetry is inspired by the conversation entered into by reading other poems.” — John Barton

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“There is poetry as soon as we realize that we possess nothing.” — John Cage

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“I like poems that are little games.” — Peter Davison

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“Poetry is the revelation of a feeling that the poet believes to be interior and personal which the reader recognizes as his own.” — Salvatore Quasimodo

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“Usually a life turned into a poem is misrepresented.” — Mark Strand

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“Pain is filtered in a poem so that it becomes finally, in the end, pleasure.” — Mark Strand

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“Poets are soldiers that liberate words from the steadfast possession of definition.” — Eli Khamarov

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“You don't make a poem with ideas, but with words.” — Stephane Mallarme

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“A poem might be defined as thinking about feelings - about human feelings and frailties.” — Anne Stevenson

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“Real friendship, like real poetry, is extremely rare - and precious as a pearl.” — Tahar Ben Jelloun

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