Poetry Quotes

"A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness"

"Poetry: the best words in the best order"

"God is the perfect poet"

"Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting that speaks"

"Poets are soldiers that liberate words from the steadfast possession of definition"

"All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling"

"A poet can survive everything but a misprint"

"Any healthy man can go without food for two days - but not without poetry"

"Always be a poet, even in prose"

"Every single soul is a poem"

"I like poems that are little games"

"A poet's work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep"

"Everyone thinks they're going to write one book of poems or one novel"

"A poem can have an impact, but you can't expect an audience to understand all the nuances"

"Poetry is an orphan of silence. The words never quite equal the experience behind them"

"Wanted: a needle swift enough to sew this poem into a blanket"

"Usually a life turned into a poem is misrepresented"

"Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash"

"A poet's autobiography is his poetry. Anything else is just a footnote"

"The moment of change is the only poem"

"We all write poems; it is simply that poets are the ones who write in words"

"However, if a poem can be reduced to a prose sentence, there can't be much to it"

"I sometimes talk about the making of a poem within the poem"

"You don't have to suffer to be a poet; adolescence is enough suffering for anyone"

"To read a poem is to hear it with our eyes; to hear it is to see it with our ears"

"Breathe-in experience, breathe-out poetry"

"You don't help people in your poems. I've been trying to help people all my life - that's my trouble"

"A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language"

"How do poems grow? They grow out of your life"

"Children and lunatics cut the Gordian knot which the poet spends his life patiently trying to untie"