Quotes on Poetry

He who knows no foreign languages knows nothing of his own.

Poetry is an orphan of silence. The words never quite equal the experience behind them.

The crown of literature is poetry.

Literature is the question minus the answer.

I don't believe any of you have ever read Paradise Lost, and you don't want to. That's something that you just want to take on trust. It's a classic ... something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.

The poet doesn't invent. He listens.

In the sea there are countless treasures, _x000D_ _x000D_ But if you desire safety, it is on the shore.

If you read quickly to get through a poem to what it means, you have missed the body of the poem.

A picture is a poem without words

Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present; the words which express what they understand not; the trumpets which sing to battle, and feel not what they inspire; the influence which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.

I believe that every English poet should read the English classics, master the rules of grammar before he attempts to bend or break them, travel abroad, experience the horrors of sordid passion, and - if he is lucky enough - know the love of an honest woman.

Gently touching with the charm of poetry.

The finest poetry was first experience.

Good poetry seems so simple and natural a thing that when we meet it we wonder that all men are not always poets. Poetry is nothing but healthy speech.

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

Novels are about other people and poems are about yourself.

The essence of poetry is invention; such invention as, by producing something unexpected, surprises and delights.

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.

An undevout poet is an impossibility.

Our poetry now is the realization that we possess nothing. Anything therefore is a delight (since we do not posses it) and thus need not fear its loss.

Some rhyme a neebor's name to lash;_x000D_ _x000D_ Some rhyme (vain thought!) for needfu' cash;_x000D_ _x000D_ Some rhyme to court the countra clash,_x000D_ _x000D_ An' raise a din;_x000D_ _x000D_ For me, an aim I never fash;_x000D_ _x000D_ I rhyme for fun.