3 December 2020 Walter Pater That sense of a life in natural objects, which in most poetry is but a rhetorical artifice, was, then, in Wordsworth the assertion of what was for him almost literal fact.
3 December 2020 Samuel Taylor Coleridge Poetry has been to me its own exceeding great reward it has given me the habit of wishing to discover the good and beautiful in all that meets and surrounds me.
3 December 2020 Herbert Spencer Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded.
3 December 2020 Carol Ann Duffy It’s always good when women win things in fiction because it tends to be more male-dominated, unlike poetry, which is more equal.
3 December 2020 Jim Jarmusch I think it comes from really liking literary forms. Poetry is very beautiful, but the space on the page can be as affecting as where the text is. Like when Miles Davis doesn’t play, it has a poignancy to it.
3 December 2020 Lafcadio Hearn I often imagine that the longer he studies English literature the more the Japanese student must be astonished at the extraordinary predominance given to the passion of love both in fiction and in poetry.
3 December 2020 Robert Morgan The fact that something is in a rhymed form or in blank verse will not make it good poetry.
3 December 2020 Saul Williams I think we fool ourselves and really negate a great deal of history if we think that the oral history of poetry is shorter than the written history of poetry. It’s not true. Poetry has a longer oral tradition than it does written.
3 December 2020 Naveen Andrews I’m not an academic, but I’ve always loved poetry since I’ve been small.
3 December 2020 Andrew Motion Poetry is at the centre of my life, too, emotionally speaking, and intellectually speaking – it’s just that I’m one of those people who enjoy doing other stuff as well.
3 December 2020 Jordin Sparks I’ve written poetry since I was in the first grade, and it wasn’t until I was a little bit older that I realized poetry could be put to music and become a song.
3 December 2020 A. R. Ammons 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.’
3 December 2020 Peter Davison Poetry should be able to reach everybody, and it should be able to appeal to all levels of understanding.
3 December 2020 Herschel Walker My favorite subject probably was math. I love math. Figures just intrigue me. I was really good at math. English probably was my worst subject. But I used to write a lot of poetry. I used to write poetry all the time.
3 December 2020 Simon Armitage People who read poetry, for example, like the feel, the heft and the smell of a book.
3 December 2020 Thom Gunn Deep feeling doesn’t make for good poetry. A way with language would be a bit of help.
3 December 2020 Salvatore Quasimodo Poetry is also the physical self of the poet, and it is impossible to separate the poet from his poetry.
3 December 2020 Muriel Rukeyser If there were no poetry on any day in the world, poetry would be invented that day. For there would be an intolerable hunger.
3 December 2020 Bruce Dickinson The mystical poetry of William Blake’s artwork also forms the basis for the album cover.
3 December 2020 Harry Mathews My next project is to get back to that. Actually, to learn how to write poetry. I’m not kidding.
3 December 2020 Allen Tate How does one happen to write a poem: where does it come from? That is the question asked by the psychologists or the geneticists of poetry.
3 December 2020 Norman MacCaig And if they haven’t got poetry in them, there’s nothing you can do that will produce it.
3 December 2020 Jack Prelutsky Children seem naturally drawn to poetry – it’s some combination of the rhyme, rhythm, and the words themselves.
3 December 2020 Phil Ochs There is an urgent need for Americans to look deeply into themselves and their actions, and musical poetry is perhaps the most effective mirror available. Every newspaper headline is a potential song.
