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Poetry, we might say, is concerned with the truth of what is, not with what is truth.

— Herbert Read What is a Poem - Endword - Selected Poems (1926)

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Poetry

More quotes by Herbert Read

All revolutions in modern times, Camus points out, have led to a reinforcement of the power of the State.

Foreword (1956)

These are the sensations and feelings that are gradually blunted by education, staled by custom, rejected in favor of social conformity.

Collected Poems (1966)

The work of art … is an instrument for tilling the human psyche, that it may continue to yield a harvest of vital beauty.

Collected Poems (1966)

Restraint is not the contrary of revolt.

Foreword (1956)

True poetry is never speech but always a song.

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