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Prose may carry a load of ill-defined matters like a ship. But poetry is the machine which drives it, pruned to a perfect economy.

— William Carlos Williams The Wedge (1944)

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Poetry

More quotes by William Carlos Williams

There’s nothing sentimental about a machine, and: A poem is a small (or large) machine made of words.

The Wedge (1944)

Still, the profound change
has come upon them: rooted, they
grip down and begin to awaken.

Spring and All (1923)

Saxifrage is my flower that splits
the rocks.

The Wedge (1944)

It's a strange courage
you give me ancient star: Shine alone in the sunrise
toward which you lend no part!

Al Que Quiere! (1917)

If so I look for a development along these lines and will be satisfied with nothing else.

The Wedge (1944)

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There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all the parts, that is, the poet.

Ralph Waldo Emerson Nature (1836)

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality.

T. S. Eliot Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919)

Poetry, unlike oratory, should not aim at clarity...but be dense with meaning, 'something to be chewed and digested'.

George Chapman Ovid's Banquet of Sense (1595)

I am no poet, but if you think for yourselves, as I proceed, the facts will form a poem in your minds.

Michael Faraday

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: William Carlos Williams (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.