quotations about poetry
Poetry is prose in slow motion.
NICHOLSON BAKER
The Anthologist
A poet is a painter in his way, he draws to the life, but in another kind; we draw the nobler part, the soul and the mind; the pictures of the pen shall outlast those of the pencil, and even worlds themselves.
APHRA BEHN
Oroonoko
Men of real talents in Arms have commonly approved themselves patrons of the liberal arts and friends to the poets, of their own as well as former times. In some instances by acting reciprocally, heroes have made poets, and poets heroes.
GEORGE WASHINGTON
letter to the Marquis de Lafayette, May 28, 1788
I hope that the feeling of making poetry is not confined to the people who write it down.... I am sure that the great glory of poetry in one's heart does not wait on achievement.
STELLA BENSON
This Is the End
Poetry is the liquid voice that can wear through stone.
ADRIENNE RICH
attributed, Unlocking the Poem
A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds. His auditors are as men entranced by the melody of an unseen musician.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
A Defence of Poetry
A poem sings with a bad accent in any language not its own.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
A true poet does not bother to be poetical. Nor does a nursery gardener scent his roses.
JEAN COCTEAU
"Le Secret Professionnel", A Call to Order
There is no true poet in whom fancy is not close akin to faith.
JOHN C. BAILEY
The Claims of French Poetry
A poet does not work by square or line.
WILLIAM COWPER
Conversation
Poesy is a part of learning in measure of words, for the most part restrained, but in all other points extremely licensed, and doth truly refer to the imagination; which, being not tied to the laws of matter, may at pleasure join that which nature hath severed, and sever that which nature hath joined, and so make unlawful matches and divorces of things.
FRANCIS BACON
The Advancement of Learning
A poet can survive everything but a misprint.
OSCAR WILDE
"The Children of the Poets", Pall Mall Gazette, October 14, 1886
Everything you invent is true: you can be sure of that. Poetry is a subject as precise as geometry.
JULIAN BARNES
Flaubert's Parrot
I think a poem, when it works, is an action of the mind captured on a page, and the reader, when he engages it, has to enter into that action. And so his mind repeats that action and travels again through the action, but it is a movement of yourself through a thought, through an activity of thinking, so by the time you get to the end you're different than you were at the beginning and you feel that difference.
ANNE CARSON
The Paris Review, fall 2004
Such is the role of poetry. It unveils, in the strict sense of the word. It lays bare, under a light which shakes off torpor, the surprising things which surround us and which our senses record mechanically.
JEAN COCTEAU
"Le Secret Professionnel", A Call to Order
You will never be alone with a poet in your pocket.
JOHN ADAMS
letter to John Quincy Adams, May 14, 1781
Poetry is never a sensible choice on financial grounds. Burglary beats poetry, when it comes to making money.
GARRISON KEILLOR
"Does love have to be a five-alarm fire?", Salon, July 15, 1998
Poetry is either something that lives like fire inside you--like music to the musician or Marxism to the Communist--or else it is nothing, an empty formalized bore around which pedants can endlessly drone their notes and explanations.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
letter to "Scottie" Fitzgerald, August 3, 1940
Away! away! I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy.
JOHN KEATS
"Ode to a Nightingale"
Much of the poetry we know about comes from our high school English classes where teachers turned to the 19th century for inspiration. While some of those poems are wonderful, quite a few are old-fashioned enough to sound obscure, and have contributed to the popular idea that poetry is unfathomable and not something meant for ordinary people. All of this is horse-twaddle, if you'll pardon my French. Poetry is for everyone, and here's how you can tell: whenever something big happens in the world or in an individual life, people turn toward it: Suddenly poems are flying around the internet, being shared, liked, and retweeted hundreds of times. Poems are read at weddings, christenings, and funerals, at opening ceremonies and presidential inaugurals. This is because poetry is the language of emotion.
MOLLY FISK
"Poetry Is All Yours", Women's Voices for Change, April 9, 2016