Poetry quotes

Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea.

Poetry, even when apparently most fantastic, is always a revolt against artifice, a revolt, in a sense, against actuality.

Poetry is a sword of lightning, ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it.

All one's inventions are true, you can be sure of that. Poetry is as exact a science as geometry.

Poetry is as precise a thing as geometry.

Poetry and progress are like two ambitious men who hate one another with an instinctive hatred, and when they meet upon the same road, one of them has to give place.

As an actor, there is room for a certain amount of creativity, but you're always ultimately going to be saying somebody else's words. I don't think I'd have the stamina, skill or ability to write a novel, but I'd love to write short stories and poetry, because those are my two passions.

Every now and then I read a poem that does touch something in me, but I never turn to poetry for solace or pleasure in the way that I throw myself into prose.

When truth has no burning, then it is philosophy, when it gets burning from the heart, it becomes poetry.

I am two fools, I know, for loving, and for saying so in whining poetry.

You will not find poetry anywhere unless you bring some of it with you.

The blood jet is poetry and there is no stopping it.

I grew up in this town, my poetry was born between the hill and the river, it took its voice from the rain, and like the timber, it steeped itself in the forests.

For awhile after you quit Keats all other poetry seems to be only whistling or humming.

Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself, but with its subject.

The crown of literature is poetry.

Teach you children poetry it opens the mind, lends grace to wisdom and makes the heroic virtues hereditary.

In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite.

The sort of poetry I seek resides in objects man can't touch.

Write verse, not poetry. The public wants verse. If you have a talent for poetry, then don't by any means mother it, but try your hand at verse.