"I have written some poetry that I don't understand myself."
Read quote
6 likes
Poetry quotes
Poetry
987 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Topics related to Poetry
Browse quotes that often appear alongside poetry — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Poetry quotes (page 10 of 50)
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"Madman drummers, bummers, Indians in the summer with a teenage diplomat. In the dumps with the mumps as the adolescent pumps his way into his hat."
Read quote
6 likes
"This is what poems are: with mercy for the greedy, they are the tongue's wrangle, the world's pottage, the rat's star."
Read quote
6 likes
"Poetry is a means of redemption."
Read quote
6 likes
"Money is a kind of poetry."
Read quote
6 likes
"All things can tempt me from this craft of verse: One time it was a woman's face, or worse-- The seeming needs of my fool-driven land; Now nothing but comes readier to the hand Than this accustomed toil."
Read quote
6 likes
"If a poet interprets a poem of his own he limits its suggestibility."
Read quote
6 likes
"I have said that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity: the emotion is contemplated till, by a species of reaction, the tranquillity gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind."
Read quote
6 likes
"The bad poet is usually unconscious where he ought to be conscious, and conscious where he ought to be unconscious."
Read quote
6 likes
"It is a test (a positive test, I do not assert that it is always valid negatively), that genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood."
Read quote
6 likes
"For true poetry, complete poetry, consists in the harmony of contraries. Hence, it is time to say aloud--and it is here above allthat exceptions prove the rule--that everything that exists in nature exists in art."
Read quote
6 likes
"The only gift is a portion of thyself . . . the poet brings his poem; the shepherd his lamb. . . ."
Read quote
6 likes
"For it is not metres, but a metre-making argument that makes a poem."
Read quote
6 likes
"Milton, Madam, was a genius that could cut a Colossus from a rock; but could not carve heads upon cherry-stones."
Read quote
6 likes
"Write a thousand words a day and in three years you'll be a writer!"
Read quote
6 likes
"This poem will never reach its destination. On Rousseau's Ode To Posterity"
Read quote
6 likes
"The fact that there are so many weak, poor and boring stories and novels written and published in America has been ascribed by our rebels to the horrible squareness of our institutions, the idiocy of power, the debasement of sexual instincts, and the failure of writers to be alienated enough. The poems and novels of these same rebellious spirits, and their theoretical statements, are grimy and gritty and very boring too, besides being nonsensical, and it is evident by now that polymorphous sexuality and vehement declarations of alienation are not going to produce great works of art either."
Read quote
6 likes
"There is no heroic poem in the world but is at bottom a biography, the life of a man."
Read quote
6 likes
"Poetry is language in orbit."
Read quote
6 likes
"God is the perfect poet."
Read quote
6 likes