850 private quotes tagged poetry

“A poet's autobiography is his poetry. Anything else is just a footnote.” — Yevgeny Yevtushenko

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“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.” — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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“When you're going through something, whether it's a wonderful thing like having a child or a sad thing like losing somebody, you often feel like 'Oh my God, I'm so overwhelmed I'm dealing with this huge thing on my own.' In fact, poetry's a nice reminder that, no, everybody goes through it. These are universal experiences.” — Caroline Kennedy

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“The musician is perhaps the most modest of animals, but he is also the proudest. It is he who invented the sublime art of ruining poetry.” — Erik Satie

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“Poetry: the best words in the best order.” — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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“The other side of it is that, despite all that, people reach out to poetry at the key moments in their lives.” — Paul Muldoon

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“He who draws noble delights from sentiments of poetry is a true poet, though he has never written a line in all his life.” — George Sand

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“Each memorable verse of a true poet has two or three times the written content.” — Alfred de Musset

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“My art and poetry is very political now. Because you've got to find that truth within you and express yourself. Somewhere out there, I know, there will be people who will listen.” — Jack Bowman

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“Poetry is composing for the breath.” — Peter Davison

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“Every single soul is a poem.” — Michael Franti

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“The moment of change is the only poem.” — Adrienne Rich

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“I grew up in a bookless house - my parents didn't read poetry, so if I hadn't had the chance to experience it at school I'd never have experienced it. But I loved English, and I was very lucky in that I had inspirational English teachers, Miss Scriven and Mr. Walker, and they liked us to learn poems by heart, which I found I loved doing.” — Carol Ann Duffy

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“You will find poetry nowhere unless you bring some of it with you.” — Joseph Joubert

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“I sometimes talk about the making of a poem within the poem.” — Howard Nemerov

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“Poetry proceeds from the totality of man, sense, imagination, intellect, love, desire, instinct, blood and spirit together.” — Jacques Maritain

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“Poetry a criticism of life under the conditions fixed for such a criticism by the laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty.” — Matthew Arnold

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“Poetry is a beautiful way of spoiling prose, and the laborious art of exchanging plain sense for harmony.” — Horace Walpole

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“It's necessary to start most work alone. But I'm tickled to death when I can pull somebody in or join someone, whether it's borrowing poetry or traveling with an associate.” — Jenny Holzer

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“If you cannot be a poet, be the poem.” — David Carradine

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“A poet looks at the world the way a man looks at a woman.” — Wallace Stevens

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“Writing poetry is the hard manual labor of the imagination.” — Ishmael Reed

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“A poem can have an impact, but you can't expect an audience to understand all the nuances.” — Douglas Dunn

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“Usually a life turned into a poem is misrepresented.” — Mark Strand

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“Poetry is that art which selects and arranges the symbols of thought in such a manner as to excite the imagination the most powerfully and delightfully.” — William C. Bryant

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