Poetry

"Jewels five-words-long, That on the stretch'd forefinger of all Time Sparkle for ever."

"Yea, marry, now it is somewhat, for now it is rhyme; before it was neither rhyme nor reason."

"A poem round and perfect as a star."

"One merit of poetry few persons will deny: it says more and in fewer words than prose."

"These pearls of thought in Persian gulfs were bred, Each softly lucent as a rounded moon; The diver Omar plucked them from their bed, FitzGerald strung them on an English thread."

"Lap me in soft Lydian airs, Married to immortal verse, Such as the meeting soul may pierce, In notes, with many a winding bout Of linkèd sweetness long drawn out."

"We hold that the most wonderful and splendid proof of genius is a great poem produced in a civilized age."

"I consider poetry very subordinate to moral and political science."

"Give lettered pomp to teeth of Time, So "Bonnie Doon" but tarry: Blot out the epic's stately rhyme, But spare his Highland Mary!"

"Old-fashioned poetry, but choicely good."

"Verba togæ sequeris, junctura callidus acri, Ore teres modico, pallentes radere mores Doctus, et ingenuo culpam defigere ludo."

"Musæo contigens cuncta lepore."

"It ["The Ancient Mariner"] is marvellous in its mastery over that delightfully fortuitous inconsequence that is the adamantine logic of dreamland."

"For, of all compositions, he thought that the sonnet Best repaid all the toil you expended upon it."

"Never did Poesy appear So full of heaven to me, as when I saw how it would pierce through pride and fear To the lives of coarsest men."

"The merit of poetry, in its wildest forms, still consists in its truth—truth conveyed to the understanding, not directly by the words, but circuitously by means of imaginative associations, which serve as its conductors."

"An erit, qui velle recuset Os populi meruisse? et cedro digna locutus Linquere, nec scombros metuentia carmina nec thus."

"Curst be the verse, how well soe'er it flow, That tends to make one worthy man my foe, Give virtue scandal, innocence a fear, Or from the soft-eyed virgin steal a tear!"

"Tale tuum carmen nobis, divine poeta, Quale sopor fessis in gramine."

"And so no force, however great, Can strain a cord, however fine, Into a horizontal line That shall be absolutely straight."

"Wisdom married to immortal verse."

"The vision and the faculty divine; Yet wanting the accomplishment of verse."

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

"The varying verse, the full resounding line, The long majestic march, and energy divine."

"Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows, and of lending existence to nothing."

"Un poète doit laisser des traces de son passage, non des preuves. Seules les traces font rêver."

"Poetry, unlike oratory, should not aim at clarity... but be dense with meaning, 'something to be chewed and digested'..."

"You speak As one who fed on poetry."

"I think that we're beginning to remember that the first poets didn't come out of a classroom, that poetry began when somebody walked off of a savanna or out of a cave and looked up at the sky with wonder and said, "Ahhh." That was the first poem."

"I think that poetry, in general, after a certain point in a poet's life, has to do with the acknowledgment of mortality. And even the most joyful poems have to do with, "Yes, let's not forget that life is brief." Once I started dealing with grief in poetry, I discovered that I had found my way to poetry. I think that so many young poets are only writing about the joy of love and that sort of thing and don't understand that the great poetry, like Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle" and like Wordsworth's "Intimations" and "Tintern Abby," has all been a moment when the poet realizes that "this is my time to express what I have gathered in this brief life"... it was poetry and literature that led me to understand that to stifle someone else's emotional life is almost immoral, that you have to let people continue to live, and that grief is one of the great shackles. If you let grief hinder you, you can become trapped in it."

"Poetry is itself a thing of God; He made his prophets poets; and the more We feel of poesie do we become Like God in love and power,—under-makers."

"If there is poetry in my book about the sea, it is not because I deliberately put it there, but because no one could write truthfully about the sea and leave out the poetry."

"Poets often have a perception that gives their words the validity of science. So the English poet Francis Thompson said nearly a century ago, ‘Thou canst not stir a flower/Without troubling of a star.’ But the poet's insight has not become part of general knowledge."

"By failing to read or listen to poets, society dooms itself to inferior modes of articulation, those of the politician, the salesman, or the charlatan. In other words, it forfeits its own evolutionary potential. For what distinguishes us from the rest of the animal kingdom is precisely the gift of speech. Poetry is not a form of entertainment and in a certain sense not even a form of art, but it is our anthropological, genetic goal. Our evolutionary, linguistic beacon."

"For there is no heroic poem in the world but is at bottom a biography, the life of a man; also, it may be said, there is no life of a man, faithfully recorded, but is a heroic poem of its sort, rhymed or unrhymed."

"Poetry, therefore, we will call Musical Thought."

"Poetry worthy of its name is measured by the degree of abstention, of refusal, it implies, and that negative component of its nature must be maintained as essential: it balks at tolerating anything already seen, heard, agreed upon, at using anything already used except when diverting it from its previous function."

"Of the many definitions of poetry, the simplest is still the best: 'memorable speech'."

"To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric."

"Our poetry now is the realization that we possess nothing. Anything therefore is a delight (since we do not possess it) and thus need not fear its loss."

"It is a test (a positive test, I do not assert that it is always valid negatively), that genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood."

"Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things."

"Poetry is man's rebellion against being what he is."

"A poet rises while falling. It’s the rising in the falling that makes him rise posthumously."

"Poetry comes nearer to vital truth than history."

"Language is fossil poetry."

"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."

"I am no poet, but if you think for yourselves, as I proceed, the facts will form a poem in your minds."

"Poetry's a mere drug, Sir."

"A poem is a naked person . . . some people say that I am a poet."