Quotes about Poetry

The only wealth I'm interested in is a wealth of words.

It was a destructive novel of acquired ideas. To finally wake up in a state of creative anguish, to lose oneself in order to find oneself again, to sleep in the arms of a beautiful student whose name one didn't know, to fall back to sleep over a love poem-that was called existence. The harmonics of artistic creation, of fertile sensibility, of anticipated events-history in movement-that was called a privilege.

Dosn't thou 'ear my 'erse's legs, as they canters awaäy?Proputty, proputty, proputty—that's what I 'ears 'em saäy.

Now lies the Earth all Danaë to the stars,And all thy heart lies open unto me.

The question is: Why have these poems and prayers endured? Why, thousands of years later, do we still have them? And the answer you'll return to again and again is: They speak to our human experience.

Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.

Every poem is a momentary stay against the confusion of the world.

Lodged The rain to the wind said, 'You push and I'll pelt.' They so smote the garden bed. That the flowers actually knelt, And lay lodged -- though not dead. I know how the flowers felt.

I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering.

I won't have it, in poetry, that bulk counts. People say to me, 'Now settle down and do a long work, since you have shown the public that you can produce beautiful short poetry.' And their implication tells me that making two verses or a short poem does not satisfy their concept of what an accomplished poet should be able to do. Bulk they want, as evidence of a man's power.

Not far, but near, I stood and saw it all, Behind low boughs the trees let down outside; And the sweet pang it cost me not to call And tell you that I saw does still abide. But 'tis not true that thus I dwelt aloof, For the wood wakes, and you are here for proof.

Roses red and vi'lets blue, Sugar's sweet, and so are you