Quotes about Poetry

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

The human body can play music, kill germs, make a baby, recite poetry, and monitor the movement of stars all at the same time, because the field of infinite correlation is part of its information field.

Every leaf speaks bliss to me, fluttering from the autumn tree.

Charles Wesley fully sided with the Arminianism of his brother John, and abused his poetic gift by writing poor doggerel against Calvinism.847 He had a bitter controversy on the subject with Toplady, who was a devout Calvinist. But their theological controversy is dead and buried, while their devotional hymns still live, and Calvinists and Methodists heartily join in singing Wesley's "Jesus, Lover of my Soul," and Toplady's "Rock of Ages, cleft for me.

By failing to read or listen to poets, society dooms itself to inferior modes of articulation, those of the politician, the salesman or the charlatan.

How does the ordinary person come to the transcendent? For a start, I would say, study poetry. Learn how to read a poem. You need not have the experience to get the message, or at least some indication of the message. It may come gradually. (92)

People often think of the Goddess as a fertility deity only. Not at all—she's the muse. She's the inspirer of poetry. She's the inspirer of the spirit. So, she has three functions: one, to give us life; two, to be the one who receives us in death; and three, to inspire our spiritual, poetic realization.

Our own poor poets, I am afraid, have been so intimidated by our clinics and laboratories that they have abandoned the first principles of beginning, that of the festival; and the heart of the festival has always been the atmosphere of myth, of delight.