3 December 2020 Diane Wakoski From reading a previous answer, you know that I consider all those aspects to be part of American cultural myth and thus they figure into good American poetry, whether the poet is aware of what he is doing or not.
3 December 2020 Peter Davison But for me, being an editor I’ve been an editor of all kinds of books being an editor of poetry has been the way in which I could give a crucial part of my time to what I love most.
3 December 2020 Rita Dove Have you ever heard a good joke? If you’ve ever heard someone just right, with the right pacing, then you’re already on the way to poetry. It’s about using words in very precise ways and using gesture.
3 December 2020 William Blake Poetry fettered, fetters the human race. Nations are destroyed or flourish in proportion as their poetry, painting, and music are destroyed or flourish.
3 December 2020 Keith Haring I have been enlightened. I have fallen into poetry and it has swallowed me up.
3 December 2020 Lafcadio Hearn The subject of Finnish poetry ought to have a special interest for the Japanese student, if only for the reason that Finnish poetry comes more closely in many respects to Japanese poetry than any other form of Western poetry.
3 December 2020 Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel A definition of poetry can only determine what poetry should be and not what poetry actually was and is otherwise the most concise formula would be: Poetry is that which at some time and some place was thus named.
3 December 2020 Edward Young There is something about poetry beyond prose logic, there is mystery in it, not to be explained but admired.
3 December 2020 Julio Cortazar Only in dreams, in poetry, in play do we sometimes arrive at what we were before we were this thing that, who knows, we are.
3 December 2020 Thomas B. Macaulay Perhaps no person can be a poet, or even enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind.
3 December 2020 Anthony Hecht Poetry operates by hints and dark suggestions. It is full of secrets and hidden formulae, like a witch’s brew.
3 December 2020 Yevgeny Yevtushenko A poet’s autobiography is his poetry. Anything else is just a footnote.
3 December 2020 Jack Prelutsky Poetry seems to sink into us the way prose doesn’t. I can still quote verses I learned when I was very young, but I have trouble remembering one line of a novel I just finished reading.
3 December 2020 Galway Kinnell That’s the way it is with poetry: When it is incomprehensible it seems profound, and when you understand it, it is only ridiculous.
3 December 2020 Patti Smith I came into music because I thought the presentation of poetry wasn’t vibrant enough. So I merged improvised poetry with basic rock chords.
3 December 2020 Peter Davison I think poetry has lost an awful lot of its muscle because nobody knows any. Nobody has to memorize poetry.
3 December 2020 John Drinkwater If it is an imperfect word, no external circumstance can heighten its value as poetry.
3 December 2020 William Shenstone The lines of poetry, the period of prose, and even the texts of Scripture most frequently recollected and quoted, are those which are felt to be preeminently musical.
3 December 2020 Ian Hamilton Finlay But at the beginning it was clear to me that concrete poetry was peculiarly suited for using in public settings. This was my idea, but of course I never really much got the chance to do it.
3 December 2020 Stephen Spender Great poetry is always written by somebody straining to go beyond what he can do.
3 December 2020 Allen Tate Serious poetry deals with the fundamental conflicts that cannot be logically resolved: we can state the conflicts rationally, but reason does not relieve us of them.
3 December 2020 Teresa Palmer The nerds are my favourite sort of boys – any guy with a passion – whether it be physics or film or writing or poetry even, I think it’s super sweet and it’s very attractive for a female.
3 December 2020 Lascelles Abercrombie That is to say, epic poetry has been invented many times and independently but, as the needs which prompted the invention have been broadly similar, so the invention itself has been.
3 December 2020 Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel Women are treated as unjustly in poetry as in life. The feminine ones are not idealistic, and the idealistic not feminine.
