850 private quotes tagged poetry

“Some say they see poetry in my paintings I see only science.” — Georges Seurat

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“For there is a sound reasoning upon all flowers. For flowers are peculiarly the poetry of Christ.” — Christopher Smart

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“Poetry uses the hub of a torque converter for a jello mold.” — Diane Glancy

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“So much of my poetry begins with something that I can describe in visual terms, so thinking about distance, thinking about how life begins and what might be watching us.” — Tracy K. Smith

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“You don't have to suffer to be a poet; adolescence is enough suffering for anyone.” — John Ciardi

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“You watch an old 'Jeopardy!' and the categories alone are very plain. 'Poetry,' or 'Movies,' or 'Physics.' If you watch it now, though, there'll be a theme board where the categories are all Hitchcock movies. Lots more jokes, lots more high-concept categories and questions.” — Ken Jennings

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“Versatility of education can be found in our best poetry, but the depth of mankind should be found in the philosopher.” — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

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“Experience has taught me, when I am shaving of a morning, to keep watch over my thoughts, because, if a line of poetry strays into my memory, my skin bristles so that the razor ceases to act.” — A. E. Housman

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“So it is in poetry. All we ask is that the mood recorded shall impress us as having been of the kind that exhausts the imaginative capacity if it fails to do this the failure will announce itself either in prose or in insignificant verse.” — John Drinkwater

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“If you read quickly to get through a poem to what it means, you have missed the body of the poem.” — M. H. Abrams

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“It is the hour to be drunken! to escape being the martyred slaves of time, be ceaselessly drunk. On wine, on poetry, or on virtue, as you wish.” — Charles Baudelaire

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“Dancing is the poetry of the foot.” — John Dryden

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“Narrative art, the novel, from Murasaki to Proust, has produced great works of poetry.” — Eugenio Montale

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“I knew what book we had to write, it was clear in my head it was journals and poetry. So I passed on their offer. I told my agent this is our vision, and no one's done it this way.” — Kenny Loggins

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“I'm quite sure that most writers would sustain real poetry if they could, but it takes devotion and talent.” — Marguerite Young

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“I have experienced healing through other writers' poetry, but there's no way I can sit down to write in the hope a poem will have healing potential. If I do, I'll write a bad poem.” — Marilyn Hacker

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“What she did was to open our eyes to details of country life such as teaching us names of wild flowers and getting us to draw and paint and learn poetry.” — Laurie Lee

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“The mystic purchases a moment of exhilaration with a lifetime of confusion and the confusion is infectious and destructive. It is confusing and destructive to try and explain anything in terms of anything else, poetry in terms of psychology.” — Basil Bunting

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“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.” — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

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“Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It's that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that's what the poet does.” — Allen Ginsberg

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“For my part, if I consider poetry as an object, I maintain that it is born of the necessity of adding a vocal sound (speech) to the hammering of the first tribal music.” — Eugenio Montale

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“A public expectation, it has to be said, not of poetry as such but of political positions variously approvable by mutually disapproving groups.” — Seamus Heaney

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“I'm conscious of a series of circles working its way through my life. And at this particular moment I have come round to the beginning of my writing cycle. It begins with poetry. There's hardly a day that goes past on which I don't write poetry.” — Ben Okri

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“I don't think you get to good writing unless you expose yourself and your feelings. Deep songs don't come from the surface they come from the deep down. The poetry and the songs that you are suppose to write, I believe are in your heart.” — Judy Collins

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“The middle class is doing fine in fiction. But it's not what gets me going. I love the working class, and everyone from it I've met, and think they're incredibly witty, inventive - there's a lot of poetry there.” — Martin Amis

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