Quotes about poetry and poets

"A poet in history is divine, but a poet in the next room is a joke."

Eastman, Max on poetry and poets   

"I would define the poetic effect as the capacity that a text displays for continuing to generate different readings, without ever being completely consumed."

Eco, Umberto on poetry and poets   

"Here undoubtedly lies the chief poetic energy: --in the force of imagination that pierces or exalts the solid fact, instead of floating among cloud-pictures."

Eliot, George on poetry and poets   

"When a poet's mind is perfectly equipped for its work, it is constantly amalgamating disparate experiences."

Eliot, T. S. on poetry and poets   

"We must believe that emotion recollected in tranquillity is an inexact formula. For it is neither emotion, nor recollection, nor without distortion of meaning, tranquillity. It is a concentration, and a new thing resulting from the concentration of a very great number of experiences which to the practical and active person would not seem to be experiences at all; it is a concentration which does not happen consciously or of deliberation. These experiences are not recollected and they finally unite in an atmosphere which is tranquil only in that it is a passive attending upon the event."

Eliot, T. S. on poetry and poets   

"It seems just possible that a poem might happen to a very young man: but a poem is not poetry --That is a life."

Eliot, T. S. on poetry and poets   

"I take as metaphysical poetry that in which what is ordinarily apprehensible only by thought is brought within the grasp of feeling, or that in which what is ordinarily only felt is transformed into thought without ceasing to be feeling."

Eliot, T. S. on poetry and poets   

"Each venture is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate with shabby equipment always deteriorating in the general mess of imprecision of feeling."

Eliot, T. S. on poetry and poets   

"It does not need that a poem should be long. Every word was once a poem. Every new relationship is a new word."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on poetry and poets   

"Only poetry inspires poetry."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on poetry and poets
3 fans of this quote   

This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

"Painting was called silent poetry and poetry speaking painting."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on poetry and poets   

"Poetry must be as new as foam and as old as the rock."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on poetry and poets   

"Sooner or later that which is now life shall be poetry, and every fair and manly trait shall add a richer strain to the song."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on poetry and poets   

"Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words."

Engle, Paul on poetry and poets   

"Poetry is a mere drug, Sir."

Farquhar, George on poetry and poets   

"The writing of a poem is like a child throwing stones into a mineshaft. You compose first, then you listen for the reverberation."

Fenton, James on poetry and poets   

"A mighty good sausage stuffer was spoiled when the man became a poet."

Field, Eugene on poetry and poets   

"Poetry is at least an elegance and at most a revelation."

Fitzgerald, Robert on poetry and poets   

"Of all great poems, love is the absolute and essential foundation."

Fitzhugh, C. on poetry and poets   

"All one's inventions are true, you can be sure of that. Poetry is as exact a science as geometry."

Flaubert, Gustave on poetry and poets   

"We all write poems. It is simply that poets are the ones who write in words."

Fowles, John on poetry and poets
3 fans of this quote   

"Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat."

Frost, Robert on poetry and poets
3 fans of this quote   

"A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. It finds the thought and the thought finds the words."

Frost, Robert on poetry and poets
3 fans of this quote   

"I would as soon write free verse as play tennis with the net down."

Frost, Robert on poetry and poets
3 fans of this quote   

"A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom."

Frost, Robert on poetry and poets
4 fans of this quote   

"Poetry is what is lost in translation."

Frost, Robert on poetry and poets
3 fans of this quote   

"Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down."

Frost, Robert on poetry and poets   

"Poetry is the language in which man explores his own amazement... says heaven and earth in one word... speaks of himself and his predicament as though for the first time. It has the virtue of being able to say twice as much as prose in half the time, and the drawback, if you do not give it your full attention, of seeming to say half as much in twice the time."

Fry, Christopher on poetry and poets   

"Just as a new scientific discovery manifests something that was already latent in the order of nature, and at the same time is logically related to the total structure of the existing science, so the new poem manifests something that was already latent in the order of words."

Frye, Northrop on poetry and poets   

"Between religion's this is and poetry's but suppose this is, there must always be some kind of tension, until the possible and the actual meet at infinity."

Frye, Northrop on poetry and poets   

"I don't know a better preparation for life than a love of poetry and a good digestion."

Gale, Zona on poetry and poets   

"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."

Ginsberg, Allen on poetry and poets   

"I have a new method of poetry. All you got to do is look over your notebooks... or lay down on a couch, and think of anything that comes into your head, especially the miseries. Then arrange in lines of two, three or four words each, don't bother about sentences, in sections of two, three or four lines each."

Ginsberg, Allen on poetry and poets   

"If there's no money in poetry, neither is there poetry in money."

Graves, Robert on poetry and poets   

"Poetry is emotion put into measure. The emotion must come by nature, but the measure can be acquired by art."

Hardy, Thomas on poetry and poets   

"The poetry from the eighteenth century was prose; the prose from the seventeenth century was poetry."

Hare, David on poetry and poets   

"Poetry is the key to the hieroglyphics of nature."

Hare, David on poetry and poets
4 fans of this quote   

"The essence of poetry is will and passion."

Hazlitt, William on poetry and poets   

"Poetry is the universal language which the heart holds with nature and itself. He who has a contempt for poetry, cannot have much respect for himself, or for anything else."

Hazlitt, William on poetry and poets   

This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

"The poetical impression of any object is that uneasy, exquisite sense of beauty or power that cannot be contained within itself; that is impatient of all limit; that (as flame bends to flame) strives to link itself to some other image of kindred beauty or grandeur; to enshrine itself, as it were, in the highest forms of fancy, and to relieve the aching sense of pleasure by expressing it in the boldest manner."

Hazlitt, William on poetry and poets