Poetry Quotes

"Poetry is truth in its Sunday clothes"

"Poetry is the exquisite expression of exquisite expressions"

"I had art as a major, along with English, French and History. I had dance, modern dance. In English I was allowed to write my own poetry, which I eventually got published"

Sally Kirkland, Actress

"I'm not really quiet or shy. Ask any of my friends! But I always ground my poetry in life itself. Poetry is an art of language, though, so I am always aware of every word's meaning, or multiple meanings"

Anne Stevenson, Poet

"Poetry for me is as much a spiritual practice as sexual ecstasy is"

James Broughton, Director

"My films are an extension of my poetry, using the white screen like the white page to be filled with images"

James Broughton, Director

"The musician - if he be a good one - finds his own perception prompted by the poet's perception, and he translates the expression of that perception from the terms of poetry into the terms of music"

John Drinkwater, Poet

"Poetry is the communication through words of certain experiences that can be communicated in no other way"

John Drinkwater, Poet

"A lyric, it is true, is the expression of personal emotion, but then so is all poetry, and to suppose that there are several kinds of poetry, differing from each other in essence, is to be deceived by wholly artificial divisions which have no real being"

John Drinkwater, Poet

"You don't go after poetry, you take what comes. Maybe the gods do it through me but I certainly do a hell of a lot of the work"

Phyllis Gotlieb, Novelist

"For while the subjects of poetry are few and recurrent, the moods of man are infinitely various and unstable. It is the same in all arts"

John Drinkwater, Poet

"But in the finished art of the song the use of words has no connection with the use of words in poetry"

John Drinkwater, Poet

"I began the way nearly everybody I ever heard of - I began writing poetry. And I find that to be quite usual with writers, their trying their hand at poetry"

Shelby Foote, Author

"Poetry isn't a profession, it's a way of life. It's an empty basket; you put your life into it and make something out of that"

Mary Oliver, Poet

"Religion is no more possible without prayer than poetry without language, or music without atmosphere"

James Martineau, Philosopher

"Poetry is thoughts that breathe, and words that burn"

Thomas Gray, Poet

"I didn't want to deal in poetry. I got rid of that after a few months"

Tom Wesselmann, Artist

"So I suppose poetry, language, the shaping of it, was and remains for me an effort to make sense out of essentially senseless situations"

Thomas Lynch, Politician

"What we know is that Shakespeare wrote perhaps the most remarkable body of passionate love poetry in the English language to a young man"

Stephen Greenblatt, Critic

"And at least in poetry you should feel free to lie. That is, not to lie, but to imagine what you want, to follow the direction of the poem"

Mark Strand, Poet

"Poetry being the sign of that which all men desire, even though the desire be unconscious, intensity of life or completeness of experience, the universality of its appeal is a matter of course"

John Drinkwater, Poet

"It should here be added that poetry habitually takes the form of verse"

John Drinkwater, Poet

"Poetry is something that happens in universities, in creative writing programs or in English departments"

Mark Strand, Poet

"A great many people seem to think writing poetry is worthwhile, even though it pays next to nothing and is not as widely read as it should be"

Mark Strand, Poet

"I'm hopefully touring with Colin Baker next year in Perfect Strangers. I have performed with Sylvia Simms in poetry and music evenings. I would love to do those for the rest of my career - they are so fun and witty"

Louise Jameson, Actress

"There is an urgent need for Americans to look deeply into themselves and their actions, and musical poetry is perhaps the most effective mirror available. Every newspaper headline is a potential song"

Phil Ochs, Musician

"Bleak House is just the most astounding piece of work. There's huge, visionary poetry in it"

Simon Callow, Actor

"I've got a book of poetry by the bed, one of these big collections that goes back to the Greeks and Romans"

Martin C. Smith

"I would say that American poetry has always been a poetry of personal testimony"

Mark Strand, Poet

"To a poet the mere making of a poem can seem to solve the problem of truth, but only a problem of art is solved in poetry"

Laura Riding, Poet

"Theater and poetry were what helped people stay alive and want to go on living"

Vanessa Redgrave, Actress

"Poetry is ordinary language raised to the Nth power. Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words"

Paul Engle, Poet

"Perhaps there is an idea among Japanese students that one general difference between Japanese and Western poetry is that the former cultivates short forms and the latter longer ones, gut this is only in part true"

Lafcadio Hearn, Author

"It is true that short forms of poetry have been cultivated in the Far East more than in modern Europe; but in all European literature short forms of poetry are to be found - indeed quite as short as anything in Japanese"

Lafcadio Hearn, Author

"I wonder if I ever thought of an ideal reader... I guess when I was in my 20s and in New York and maybe even in my early 30s, I would write for my wife Janice... mainly for my poet friends and my wife, who was very smart about poetry"

Kenneth Koch, Poet

"I love painting and music, of course. I don't know nearly as much about them as I know about poetry. I've certainly been influenced by fiction. I was overwhelmed by War and Peace when I read it, and I didn't read it until I was in my late 20s"

Kenneth Koch, Poet

"I've already written 300 space poems. But I look upon my ultimate form as being a poetic prose. When you read it, it appears to be prose, but within the prose you have embedded the techniques of poetry"

Story Musgrave, Astronaut

"Only in dreams, in poetry, in play do we sometimes arrive at what we were before we were this thing that, who knows, we are"

Julio Cortazar, Writer

"But poetry is a way of language, it is not its subject or its maker's background or interests or hobbies or fixations. It is nearer to utterance than history"

Thomas Lynch, Politician

"The quietest poetry can be an explosion of joy"

James Broughton, Director

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