Quotations About Poetry II

Poetry is man's rebellion against being what he is. ~James Branch Cabell


It is the job of poetry to clean up our word-clogged reality by creating silences around things. ~Stephen Mallarme


Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason. ~Novalis


There is poetry as soon as we realize that we possess nothing. ~John Cage


Breathe-in experience,
breathe-out poetry.
~Muriel Rukeyser


I grew up in this town, my poetry was born between the hill and the river, it took its voice from the rain, and like the timber, it steeped itself in the forests. ~Pablo Neruda



What is a Professor of Poetry? How can poetry be professed? ~W.H. Auden


Poetry is the language in which man explores his own amazement. ~Christopher Fry


Mathematics and Poetry are... the utterance of the same power of imagination, only that in the one case it is addressed to the head, in the other, to the heart. ~Thomas Hill


The crown of literature is poetry. It is its end and aim. It is the sublimest activity of the human mind. It is the achievement of beauty and delicacy. The writer of prose can only step aside when the poet passes. ~W. Somerset Maugham



Poetry comes with anger, hunger and dismay; it does not often visit groups of citizens sitting down to be literary together, and would appal them if it did. ~Christopher Morley


Everything one invents is true, you may be perfectly sure of that. Poetry is as precise as geometry. ~Gustave Flaubert




Even when poetry has a meaning, as it usually has, it may be inadvisable to draw it out.... Perfect understanding will sometimes almost extinguish pleasure. ~A.E. Housman



Poetry is plucking at the heartstrings, and making music with them. ~Dennis Gabor


Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words. ~Edgar Allan Poe


Poetry is the revelation of a feeling that the poet believes to be interior and personal which the reader recognizes as his own. ~Salvatore Quasimodo


Browsing the dim back corner
Of a musty antique shop
Opened an old book of poetry
Angels flew out from the pages
I caught the whiff of a soul
The ink seemed fresh as today
Was that voices whispering?
The tree of the paper still grows.
~Pixie Foudre


You will find poetry nowhere unless you bring some of it with you. ~Joseph Joubert


Science is for those who learn; poetry, for those who know. ~Joseph Roux


Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance. ~Carl Sandburg


Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits. ~Carl Sandburg


Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth. ~Samuel Johnson


I've written some poetry I don't understand myself. ~Carl Sandburg


The poetry of the earth is never dead. ~John Keats


Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful. ~Rita Dove