Quotes on Poetry Is

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.

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

Poetry is all nouns and verbs.

Writing poetry is the hard manual labor of the imagination.

Poetry is the only life got, the only work done, the only pure product and free labor of man, performed only when he has put all the world under his feet, and conquered the last of his foes.

Poetry is at least an elegance and at most a revelation.

Writing poetry is a state of free float.

I think that were beginning to remember that the first poets didn't come out of a classroom, that poetry began when somebody walked off of a savanna or out of a cave and looked up at the sky with wonder and said, "Ahhh." That was the first poem.

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

Poetry is prose bewitched, a music made of visual thoughts, the sound of an idea.

Poetry is the journal of the sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air. Poetry is a search for syllables to shoot at the barriers of the unknown and the unknowable. Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away.

Poetry is a dissociating and anarchic force which through analogy, associations and imagery, thrives on the destruction of known relationships.

Poetry can be dangerous, especially beautiful poetry, because it gives the illusion of having had the experience without actually going through it.

There is nothing at all that can be talked about adequately, and the whole art of poetry is to say what can't be said.

Poetry is a political act because it involves telling the truth.

Poetry is what we turn to in the most emotional moments of our life - when a beloved friend dies, when a baby is born or when we fall in love.

Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth.

If we’re going to solve the problems of the world, we have to learn how to talk to one another. Poetry is the language at its essence. It’s the bones and the skeleton of the language. It teaches you, if nothing else, how to choose your words.

poetry is the breath and finer spirit of knowledge

The function of poetry is religious invocation of the muse; its use is the experience of mixed exaltation and horror that her presence excites.

in a sense, all poetry is positional: to try to express one's position in regard to the universe embraced by consciousness, is an immemorial urge. The arms of consciousness reach out and grope, and the longer they are the better. Tentacles, not wings, are Apollo's natural members.