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'Crap,' said Janet. 'He was a whinger and he wrote it down. That's not poetry.'

— Helen Garner Cosmo Cosmolino (1992)

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Poetry

More quotes by Helen Garner

'In my profession I have learned that women can bear more pain than men.'

'Didn't this used to be our dining-room table back at Sutherland Street, Frank?' said Kathleen.

Honour & Other People's Children (1980)

Our minds are not hopeful, thought Janet; but our nerves are made of optimistic stuff.

Cosmo Cosmolino (1992)

'What's funny?' said Pin, shifting uncomfortably in the hospital bed.

Honour & Other People's Children (1980)

Out in deep space the planets sweep, inexorable, along their splendid orbits. Maxine bowed her head. From now on she would take the gods' dictation.

Cosmo Cosmolino (1992)

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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: Helen Garner (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.