850 private quotes tagged poetry

“The decision to write in prose instead of poetry is made more by the readers than by writers. Almost no one is interested in reading narrative in verse.” — Robert Morgan

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“One of the most powerful devices of poetry is the use of distortions. You can go from talking about the way a minute passes to the way a century passes, or a lifetime.” — Robert Morgan

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“Colloquial poetry is to the real art as the barber's wax dummy is to sculpture.” — Ezra Pound

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“There may be more poetry than justice in poetic justice.” — George Will

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“A poem in form still has to have voice, gesture, a sense of discovery, a metaphoric connection, as any poetry does.” — Robert Morgan

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“Poetry isn't a profession, it's a way of life. It's an empty basket you put your life into it and make something out of that.” — Mary Oliver

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“You have to really dive deep back into yourself and get rid of so much modern analytical categorization. It's one of the great things poetry does.” — Robert Morgan

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“Poetry is the most subtle of the literary arts, and students grow more ingenious by the year at avoiding it. If they can nip around Milton, duck under Blake and collapse gratefully into the arms of Jane Austen, a lot of them will.” — Terry Eagleton

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“The great watershed of modern poetry is French, more than English.” — Robert Morgan

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“Poetry, almost by definition, calls attention to its language and form.” — Robert Morgan

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“I don't think the creative writing industry has helped American poetry.” — Robert Morgan

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“Still, language is resilient, and poetry when it is pressured simply goes underground.” — Diane Wakoski

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“The Language Poets are writing only about language itself. The Ashbery poets are writing only about poetry itself. That seems to me a kind of dead end.” — Robert Morgan

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“Poetry is a form of mathematics, a highly rigorous relationship with words.” — Tahar Ben Jelloun

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“It's like I understand images and some people understand poetry.” — Samantha Morton

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“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.” — William Shenstone

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“In fact a lot of them I think are absolute baloney. Those Charles Olsens and people like that. At first I was interested in seeing what they were up to, what they were doing, why they were doing it. They never moved me in the way that one is moved by true poetry.” — Norman MacCaig

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“Science is for those who learn, poetry is for those who know.” — Joseph Roux

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“My films are an extension of my poetry, using the white screen like the white page to be filled with images.” — James Broughton

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“In a general way, I want to be a kind of flag-waver, bunting hanger-up, drum-beater, you name it, for poetry.” — Andrew Motion

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“You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.” — Mario Cuomo

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“More people are reading poetry now than at any time in the history of the human race.” — Andrew Motion

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“I wanted to reimagine the role, in a way that was respectful of its traditional responsibilities but made them part of a wider pattern of poetry about national incidents, events, preoccupations and to spend a great deal of time going to schools trying to demystify poetry.” — Andrew Motion

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“Poetry is a special use of language that opens onto the real. The business of the poet is truth telling, which is why in the Celtic tradition no one could be a teacher unless he or she was a poet.” — Huston Smith

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“A true poet does not bother to be poetical. Nor does a nursery gardener scent his roses.” — Jean Cocteau

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