Poetry Quotes

Float beyond the world of trees. Out into the whispering breeze, past the rushes, past the weeds, past the marsh's waving reeds.

the rain in this room is low and thickand undressing my heart through the air. – intimacy

...the religion of the heart is as intimate as a wish breathed to the night sky...

Drinking the energy of the universeBreathing along with the CosmosWith each breathI am rebornInto a brand new existence.

A poet is someone who can use a single image to send a universal message.

America—where we hate our fathers, love our mothers, andeveryone is hung up on tryingto be a man

All my contemporaries—hundred-and-fivers or convicts—will tell you how we livedin barely sentient fear, raisingchildren for the executioner, prison, or the torture chamber.

My exclamation mark formed into a question markIt hunched over and second-guessed itselfMaybe life is not so well understoodMaybe life is confusing after all

It is the curse of the competent―not to be called upon.

In my mind he is a demon and a godand I blame him, I blame him, I blame himfor the world I created on my ownas much as the one he built around me.

If poetry escapes my mouth then it shall seek comfort in your heart. Will you keep it safe?

You will fall with me as a stone in the grave

th' unconquerable will, / And study of revenge, immortal hate, / And courage never to submit or yield/ And what is else not to be overcome?

To come up with one great sentence, one needs to serve a life sentence.

Death defines life. I'd rather stay undefined.

He sleeps for himself and dreams for others.

Failure is the new success.

If poetry dies, nothing lives !

Poetry the eldest sister of all arts and parent of most.

Poetry therefore we will call Musical Thought.

All that is not prose passes for poetry.

Oh love will make a dog howl in rhyme.

With me poetry has not been a purpose but a passion.

The reader who is illuminated is in a real sense the poem.

Publishing a volume of verse is like dropping a rose-petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo.

I was promised on a time To have reason for my rhyme From that time unto this season I received nor rhyme nor reason.

If Galileo had said in verse that the world moved the Inquisition might have let him alone.

In poetry you must love the words the ideas and the images and rhythms with all your capacity to love anything at all.

One of Wordsworth's Lake District neighbours remarked upon hearing of the poet's death "I suppose his son will carry on the business."

Poetry is not a profession it's a destiny.

Poets and painters are outside the class system or rather they constitute a special class of their own like the circus people and the gypsies.

The mind that finds its way to wild places is the poet's but the mind that never finds its way back is the lunatic's.

There's no money in poetry but then there's no poetry in money either.

The essentials of poetry are rhythm dance and the human voice.

Most joyful let the Poet be it is through him that all men see.

Most people do not believe in anything very much and our greatest poetry is given to us by those that do.

A good poet is someone who manages in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms to be struck by lightning five or six times.

I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry that is prose - words in their best order poetry - the best words in their best order.

When you write in prose you say what you mean. When you write in rhyme you say what you must.

Science is for those who learn poetry for those who know.

Popular poets are the parish priests of the Muse retailing her ancient divinations to a long since converted public.

Of our conflicts with others we make rhetoric of our conflicts with ourselves we make poetry.

An art in which the artist by means of rhythm and great sincerity can convey to others the sentiment which he feels about life.

Poets aren't very useful because they aren't consumeful or very produceful.

Poetry is the opening and closing of a door leaving those who look through to guess what is seen during a moment.

Poetry is the journal of a sea animal living on land wanting to fly in the air.

Poetry is the impish attempt to paint the colour of the wind.

For me poetry is an evasion of the real job of writing prose.

Prose lies its way to the truth

By degrees, the bitterness at my heart diffused itself to the circumference of the circle in which my life went its cheerless mechanical round.