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Two girls discover
the secret of life
in a sudden line of
poetry. I who don't know the
secret wrote
the line.

— Denise Levertov O Taste and See : New Poems (1964)

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Poetry

More quotes by Denise Levertov

Praise
the invisible sun burning beyond
the white cold sky, giving us
light and the chimney's shadow.

Mass for the Day of St. Thomas Didymus (1981)

Acknowledgement, and celebration, of mystery probably constitutes the most consistent theme of my poetry from its very beginnings.

A Poets View (1984)

Poems present their testimony as circumstantial evidences, not as closing argument.

A Poets View (1984)

Fire he sang,
that trees fear, and I, a tree, rejoiced in its flames.

A Tree Telling of Orpheus (1968)

I like to find
what's not found
at once, but lies within something of another nature,
in repose, distinct.

With Eyes at the Back of Our Heads (1960)

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