Quotes on Great Poetry

It is the job of poetry to clean up our word-clogged reality by creating silences around things.

A poem begins with a lump in the throat

But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep.

The poem is a little myth of man's capacity of making life meaningful.

Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.

Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach.

Poetry is not a civilizer, rather the reverse, for great poetry appeals to the most primitive instincts.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea.

To have great poets, there must be great audiences.

A great emotion is too selfish ; it takes into itself all the blood of the spirit, and the congestion leaves the hands too cold to write. Three sorts of emotion produce great poetry - strong but quick emotions, seized upon for art as soon as they have passed, but not before they have passed ; strong and deep emotions in their remembrance along time after ; and false emotions, that is to say, emotions felt in the intellect. Not insincerity, but a translated sincerity, is the basis of all art.

A poem is never finished, only abandoned.

Poetry is thoughts that breathe, and words that burn.

A poet's work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep.

Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.

Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand.

The poet doesn't invent. He listens.

Poetry is the revelation of a feeling that the poet believes to be interior and personal but which the reader recognizes as his own.

Great poetry is always written by somebody straining to go beyond what he can do.

Poetry is the journal of a sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air.

No man was ever yet a great poet, without being at the same time a profound philosopher.