More Quotes About Poetry

The words of emotion etched in our hearts

Roses are red, violets are…well, you get the point. Poetry can make us laugh, make us think, make us connect with our deepest and darkest feelings. These quotes are about poetry and all that it invokes in us.

1. “Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.” -Plato

2. “A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape of the universe, helps to extend everyone’s knowledge of himself and the world around him.” -Dylan Thomas

3. “Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.” -Robert Frost

4. “Poetry is ordinary language raised to the Nth power. Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words.” -Paul Engle

5. “Only the very weak-minded refuse to be influenced by literature and poetry.” -Cassandra Clare

6. “There is no money in poetry, but then there is no poetry in money, either.” -Robert Graves

7. “Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.” -Khalil Gibran

8. “All poets, all writers are political. They either maintain the status quo, or they say, ‘Something’s wrong, let’s change it for the better.’” -Sonia Sanchez

9. “Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: It takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.” -William Wordsworth

10. “He who draws noble delights from sentiments of poetry is a true poet, though he has never written a line in all his life.” -George Sand

11. “Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.” -Leonardo da Vinci

12. “To elevate the soul, poetry is necessary.” -Edgar Allan Poe

13. “I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled poets to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean.” -Socrates

14. “Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.” -T.S. Eliot

15. “The genesis of a poem for me is usually a cluster of words. The only good metaphor I can think of is a scientific one: dipping a thread into a supersaturated solution to induce crystal formation. I don’t think I solve problems in my poetry; I think I uncover the problems.” -Margaret Atwood

16. “Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It’s that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that’s what the poet does.” -Allen Ginsberg

17. “Trees are poems the earth writes upon the sky, We fell them down and turn them into paper, That we may record our emptiness.” -Kahlil Gibran

18. “There is no Frigate like a Book To take us Lands away, Nor any Coursers like a Page Of prancing Poetry.” -Emily Dickinson

19. “The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.” -Gilbert K. Chesterton

20. “I’m a great believer in poetry out of the classroom, in public places, on subways, trains, on cocktail napkins. I’d rather have my poems on the subway than around the seminar table at an MFA program.” -Billy Collins

21. “When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man’s concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.” -John F. Kennedy

22. “Poetry is thoughts that breathe, and words that burn.” -Thomas Gray

23. “If I had my life to live over again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week.” -Charles Darwin

24. “The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.” -Jean Cocteau

25. “Poetry is all that is worth remembering in life.” -William Hazlitt

26. “Poetry is to prose as dancing is to walking.” -John Wain

27. “Poets are shameless with their experiences: They exploit them.” -Friedrich Nietzsche

28. “Poetry is emotion put into measure. The emotion must come by nature, but the measure can be acquired by art.” -Thomas Hardy

29. “…and then, I have nature and art and poetry, and if that is not enough, what is enough?” -Vincent Willem van Gogh

30. “If you tell a novelist, ‘Life’s not like that’, he has to do something about it. The poet simply replies, ‘No, but I am.’” -Philip Larkin

31. “Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.” -Robert Frost

32. “It was at that age, that poetry came in search of me.” -Pablo Neruda

33. “The world is full of poetry. The air is living with its spirit; and the waves dance to the music of its melodies, and sparkle in its brightness.” -James Gates Percival

34. “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.” -Carl Sandburg

35. “One should always be drunk. That’s all that matters…But with what? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you chose. But get drunk.” -Charles Baudelaire

36. “Poetry is not the books in the library. Poetry is the encounter of the reader with the book, the discovery of the book.” -Jorge Luis Borges

37. “Poetry is plucking at the heartstrings, and making music with them.” -Dennis Gabor

38. “Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.” -Virginia Woolf

39. “Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting that speaks.” -Plutarch

40. “Poetry should surprise by a fine excess and not by singularity — it should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.” -John Keats

41. “The crown of literature is poetry.” -W. Somerset Maugham

42. “As a poet I would say everything should be able to come into a poem, but I can’t put toothbrushes in a poem. I really can’t.” -Sylvia Plath

43. “Poetry is emotion, passion, love, grief — everything that is human. It is not for zombies by zombies.” -F. Sionil Jose

44. “It is always fatal to have music or poetry interrupted.” -George Eliot

45. “I do not go in search of poetry. I wait for poetry to visit me.” -Eugenio Montale

46. “Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar.” -Percy Bysshe Shelley

47. “Poetry is what happens when nothing else can.” -Charles Bukowski

48. “Oh, speak no ill of poetry, For ’tis a holy thing.” -Lydia Huntley Sigourney

49. “Poetry is eternal graffiti written in the heart of everyone.” -Lawrence Ferlinghetti

50. “Poetry is language surprised in the act of changing into meaning.” -Stanley Kunitz

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Sources:

30 Quotes About Poetry. Book Riot. https://bookriot.com/30-quotes-about-poetry/

45 Quotes about Poetry for National Poetry Day. Interesting Literature. https://interestingliterature.com/2015/10/45-quotes-about-poetry-for-national-poetry-day/

90 Poetry Quotes Perfect For Contemplating the Power of Words. Everyday Power. https://everydaypower.com/poetry-quotes/

Poetry Quotes. BrainyQuote. https://www.brainyquote.com/topics/poetry-quotes

Poetry Quotes. Goodreads. https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/poetry

Schneider, C. (2015, April 2). 17 Poets’ Quotes About Poetry. Mental Floss. https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/62623/17-poets-quotes-about-poetry