If you know what you are going to write when you’re writing a poem, it’s going to be average.
Poetry Quotes
There are two ways of disliking poetry; one way is to dislike it, the other is to read Pope.
Every man will be a poet if he can; otherwise a philosopher or man of science. This proves the superiority of the poet.
Poets lose half the praise they should have got, Could it be known what they discreetly blot.
It is the dissatisfaction with empiric evidence that makes the poet and the mystic, for it is the lyric as well as the Bachantic impulse… Its purest form is probably manifested by children and birds in their rhapsodic moments of flight and play, especially during the last few minutes of pale blue summer dusk before […]
They learn in suffering what they teach in song.
Of all my generation, he (T. S. Eliot) most admired Auden, but once when we were praising Auden’s criticism, he said: “All the same, he’s not a scholar.” – “Why?” – “I was reading an Introduction by him to a selection of Tennyson’s poems, in which he says that Tennyson is the stupidest poet in […]
The finest cowboy poems rarely cut it on the printed page. They must be recited the way they are written, from the noggin, with feeling. They’re like fine wine. They must breathe, especially if they’ve been bottled up too long.
Thy verses are eternal, O my friend, For he who reads them, reads them to no end.
I was promised on a time To have reason for my rhyme; From that time unto this season, I receiv’d nor rhyme nor reason. (According to legend, Queen Elizabeth promised Spenser 100 pounds for a poem. When the Royal Treasurer, Lord Burghley, objected to the expense, the Queen replied, “Then give him what is reason.” […]
