For me, poetry is an impish attempt to paint the color of the wind.
Poetry Quotes
The poetry of heroism appeals irresitably to those who don’t go to a war, and even more so to those whom the war is making enormously wealthy.
Why need every honest poet be suspected of leading a quadruple life? Sometimes the second or third meaning is less interesting than the first, and the only really difficult thing about a poem is the critic’s explanation of it.
Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.
That’s going to be hard to live down for a “community” that considers itself to be avant garde – how does one lead from the rear? But today’s poets no longer have a choice: spiritually hamstrung by a combination of priggish decadence and primitive tribalism, they remain frozen in place while the world rushes by. […]
Poetry, good sir, in my opinion, is like a tender virgin, very young, and extremely beautiful, whom divers others virgins – namely, all the other sciences – make it their business to enrich, polish and adorn; and to her it belongs to make use of them all, and on her part to give luster to […]
I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry; that is, prose = words in their best order; poetry = the best words in the best order.
To be a poet at twenty is to be twenty: to be a poet at forty is to be a poet.
There are other similarities between poetry and children’s speech. Poets tend to look for significant evocative detail – something straight out of life – to carry their meaning, and to avoid the vaguely general or abstract terms. With young children it is not a matter of choice. Their ideas must take a concrete form of […]
Nothing probably is more dangerous for the human race than science without poetry, civilization without culture.
