Authors
Topics
Lists
Pictures
Resources
Poem Quotes
500+ Sourced quotes
Source
Report...
The holiest, cruellest pains I feel,
Die stillborn, because old men squeal
For something new: "Write something new:
We've read this poem — that one too,
And twelve more like 'em yesterday"?
Robert Graves
Source
Report...
I think what holds a poem like this together for me, if it's held together, is largely meter; this one is in iambic pentameter and iambic pentameter whatever else it is, can be a very good glue. It is a very good way to hold things together. It's like 4:4 you know.
Robert Pinsky
Source
Report...
... a poem is, so to speak, a way of making you forget how you wrote it...
Randall Jarrell
Source
Report...
Come windless invader I am a carnival of Stars, a poem of blood.
Sonia Sanchez
Source
Report...
To give birth to a desire, to nourish it, to develop it, to increase it, to irritate it, to satisfy it: this is a whole poem.
Honoré de Balzac
Source
Report...
There is also, for instance, a direct symbolic strength in the words 'Say it with flowers', which makes that poem one of the cornerstones of Danish lyricism. It has stood out like a boot of an exceptionally fine fit..
Asger Jorn
Source
Report...
There'll be what you might call a moment of inspiration – a way of seeing or feeling or remembering, an instance or a person that's made a large impression. Like the sand and the oyster, it's a creative irritant. In each poem, I'm trying to reveal a truth, so it can't have a fictional beginning
Carol Ann Duffy
Source
Report...
A good poem is a tautology. It expands one word by adding a number which clarify it, thus making a new word which has never before been spoken. The seed-word is always so ordinary that hardly anyone perceives it. Classical odes grow from and or because, romantic lyrics from but or if. Immature verses expand a personal pronoun ad nauseam, the greatest works bring glory to a common verb.
Alasdair Gray
Source
Report...
A poem is that species of composition, which is opposed to works of science, by proposing for its immediate object pleasure, not truth; and from all other species (having this object in common with it) it is discriminated by proposing to itself such delight from the whole, as is compatible with a distinct gratification from each component part.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Source
Report...
And it is here under this oak where Evangeline waited for her lover, Gabriel, who never came. This oak is an immortal spot, made so by Longfellow's poem, but Evangeline is not the only one who has waited here in disappointment.
Where are the schools that you have waited for your children to have, that have never come? Where are the roads and the highways that you send your money to build, that are no nearer now than ever before? Where are the institutions to care for the sick and disabled? Evangeline wept bitter tears in her disappointment, but it lasted through only one lifetime. Your tears in this country, around this oak, have lasted for generations. Give me the chance to dry the eyes of those who still weep here!
Huey Long
Source
Report...
Poetry saves what is human in this world going gaudy & insane. In exploring small truths, something larger might turn up, adding dimension, insight, vision, recognition to our lives. We just might be more complete, more aware after a poem.
Diane Glancy
Source
Report...
At present we are living through an unusual period in time a new cosmic creation has become reality in the world, a creativity within ourselves which pervades our consciousness.... in this way the artist became the foundation on which progress in the reconstruction of life could advance beyond the frontiers of the all-seeing eye and the all-hearing ear. Thus a picture was no longer an anecdote nor a lyric poem nor a lecture on morality nor a feast for the eye but a sign and symbol of this new conception of the world which comes from within us.
El Lissitsky
Source
Report...
What I desire of a poem is a clear understanding of motive, and a just evaluation of feeling
Yvor Winters
Source
Report...
If a poet interprets a poem of his own he limits its suggestibility.
William Butler Yeats
Source
Report...
The writing of a novel or short story or poem or whatever should elevate the audience, not drag the writer down to some level beneath herself. And she — the author — should fight always to prevent that dragging down, especially when the only possible benefit of allowing it to happen is monetary.
Caitlín R. Kiernan
Source
Report...
No other human being, no woman, no poem or music, book or painting can replace alcohol in its power to give man the illusion of real creation.
Marguerite Duras
Source
Report...
I have come to this resolution—never to write for the sake of writing, or making a poem, but from running over with any little knowledge or experience which many years of reflection may perhaps give me—otherwise I shall be dumb.
John Keats
Source
Report...
No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem. It is at the bottom of life we must begin, and not at the top.
Booker T. Washington
Source
Report...
He stepped back and threw his arms out. "I'm always crazy around you Rose. Here, I'm going to write an impromptu poem for you." He tipped his head back and shouted to the sky: "Rose is in red But never in blue Sharp as a thorn Fights like one too.
Richelle Mead
Source
Report...
This poem [The Ancient Mariner] would not have taken so well if it had been called The Old Sailor.
Samuel Butler (novelist)
Source
Report...
For life is a poem to leisurely read,
And the joy of a journey lies not in its speed.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Source
Report...
I think Hemingway's [book] titles should be awarded first prize in any contest. Each of them is a poem, and their mysterious power over readers contributes to Hemingway's success. His titles have a life of their own, and they have enriched the American vocabulary.
Sylvia Beach
Source
Report...
Sweet Christ, you must know that a man will go further for any poem than for any woman ever born.
Charles Bukowski
Source
Report...
There is both rhyme and reason in what I say, I have made a dream poem of humanity. I will cling to it. I will be good. I will let death have no mastery over my thoughts. For therein lies goodness and love of humankind, and in nothing else.
Thomas Mann
Source
Report...
Poets are excellent students of blizzards and salt and broken statuary, but they are always elsewhere for the test. Any intention in the writing of poetry besides the aim to make a poem, of engaging the materials, SHOULD be disappointed. If the poet does not have the chutzpah to jeopardize habituated assumptions and practices, what will be produced will be sleep without dream, a copy of a copy of a copy.
Dean Young (poet)
1
...
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
Quote of the day
Be a sinner and sin strongly, but more strongly have faith and rejoice in Christ.
Martin Luther
Featured Authors
Lists
Predictions that didn't happen
If it's on the Internet it must be true
Remarkable Last Words (or Near-Last Words)
Picture Quotes
Confucius
Philip James Bailey
Eleanor Roosevelt
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Popular Topics
life
love
nature
time
god
power
human
mind
work
art
heart
thought
men
day
×
Lib Quotes