Poetry quotes

The poetry that sustains me is when I feel that, for a minute, the clouds have parted and I've seen ecstasy or something.

I see a resurgence of interest in poetry. I am less optimistic about the prospects for the arts when it comes to federal funding.

There are distinct duties of a poet laureate. I plan a reading series at the Library of Congress and advise the librarian. The rest is how I want to promote poetry.

Instead of trying to come up and pontificate on what literature is, you need to talk with children, to teachers, and make sure they get poetry in the curriculum early.

Have you ever heard a good joke? If you've ever heard someone just right, with the right pacing, then you're already on the way to poetry. It's about using words in very precise ways and using gesture.

I try to show what it is about language and music that enthralls, because I think those are the two elements of poetry.

I'm not a great poetry fan.

While also, importantly, not wanting to dumb it down or pretend the days of 'difficult' poetry are over, because we live in a pluralist culture and there's room for 'difficult' poetry alongside rap and everything else. And poetry won't be for everyone, but everyone should have the choice.

Poetry is the deification of reality.

Written poetry is worth reading once, and then should be destroyed. Let the dead poets make way for others.

Poetry is rather an approach to things, to life, than it is typographical production.

And, I mean, I think poetry does need to be met to some extent, especially, I guess, 19th century poetry, and for me, it's just been so worth the effort. It's like I'm planting a garden in my head.

I have to admit that I had a lot of problems with poetry.

As for how criticism of Keats' poetry relates to criticism of my own work, I'll leave that for others to decide.

Poetry is simply the most beautiful, impressive, and widely effective mode of saying things.

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.

I've never read a political poem that's accomplished anything. Poetry makes things happen, but rarely what the poet wants.

A lot happens by accident in poetry.

Poetry is the exquisite expression of exquisite expressions.

In my late teenage years, I developed a real passion for it, and wrote a lot of poetry.