Quotes about Poetry

Whilst Adam slept, Eve from his side arose; Strange his first sleep would be his last repose.

How can you love art, beauty, poetry, and hate life? That's like saying you love the ocean but hate water.

The Koran, the revealed word of God, was the closest thing to a miracle in Mohammed's life. He had not been a poet; he had no gift of words. Yet the verses of the Koran, as he received them and recited them to the faithful, were better than any verses which the professional poets of the tribes could produce. This, to the Arabs, was a miracle. To them the gift of words was the greatest gift, the poet was all-powerful.

The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters is simplicity: nothing is better than simplicity.

But he cannot see a connection between the end of yearning and the end of poetry. Is that what growing up amounts to: growing out of yearning, of passion, of all intensities of the soul?

The masters of information have forgotten about poetry, where words may have a meaning quite different from what the lexicon says, where the metaphoric spark is always one jump ahead of the decoding function, where another, unforeseen reading is always possible.

Prose, in his experience, calls for many more words than poetry. There is no point in embarking on prose if one lacks confidence that one will be alive the next day to carry on with the task.

Maybe that's a haiku, maybe not, it might be a little too complicated, said Japhy. A real haiku's gotta be as simple as porridge and yet make you see the real thing, like the greatest haiku of them all probably is the one that goes 'The sparrow hops along the veranda, with wet feet.' By Shiki. You see the wet footprints like a vision in your mind and yet in those few words you also see all the rain that's been falling that day and almost smell the wet pine needles. (The Dharma Bums, Chap. 8)

Allen was "queer in those days, experimenting with himself to the hilt, and Neal saw that, and a former boyhood hustler himself in the Denver night, and wanting dearly to learn how to write poetry like Allen, the first thing you know he was attacking Allen with a great amorous soul such as only a conman can have.

Wisdom married to immortal verse.

It should be of the pleasure of a poem itself to tell how it can. The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom. The figure is the same for love.

The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.