It is indeed astonishing that all are obsessed with poets and cannot tear themselves away from them. You would think that once they were read, that was that. Transcended, as they say now. Nothing could be farther from the truth. — Osip Mandelstam Share this quote Post on X Facebook Download image Copy quote Copy link Share… Another quote → Topics Poetry
Only in Russia poetry is respected – it gets people killed. Is there anywhere else where poetry is so common a motive for murder?
Why can't we shake things up, why can't these good translators be utilized in collective undertakings? ON TRANSLATIONS translated into English in The complete critical prose (1997)
One question conditions the dynamics and balance of color in the composition of a painting: whence the source of light?
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